


Little Friends

by Strummer_Pinks



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: kid!Rumple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-02-08 15:00:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 45
Words: 70,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1945551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strummer_Pinks/pseuds/Strummer_Pinks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumple and Belle meet as kids in elementary school.  Rumple thinks about his difficult life before he was removed from his father's care and about his only friend from those dark days, a magical woman named Astrid.  Although he loves his new life with his foster mums he wonders what happened to his first real friend and enlists Belle to help him find her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Little Friends

 

 

“Can I play?” asked Belle softly.

“Sorry,” said a snooty little girl with shiny black hair who really didn’t seem sorry at all. “Only three can go on the computer.”

“Oh,” said Belle and walked away.

“Can I play?” Belle asked the boy and girl in the playhouse. They looked similar, like twins.

“No!” They shook their heads. “This house is for twins only!” Belle furrowed her brow. She really didn’t think that could be possible as they seemed the only twins in the class.

She went to the water play area, but the boys playing with the boats there just splashed her when she got close enough to ask. Maybe she’d pass.

Then Belle noticed the library corner. It was quiet and deserted. Perfect. No one to splash her. No one to tell her she couldn’t play.

Belle chose a book of fairy tale stories, then went to sit down on the multicoloured cushions piled up in a pyramid beneath the bookcase in the library corner. She was getting good at reading now, almost as good as a grown up, she thought proudly. Her Dad even said so. At home she had an entire shelf of Dr. Seuss books that she could read all by herself.  

She sat down on the nice blue cushion at the very top of the pile.

“Ooch!” piped up the cushion. Belle sprang up from the cushion in alarm.

“Who- who’s there?” she cried.

A little boy’s head popped up from under the pile, causing a few of the cushions from the top to tumble down. He had very large brown eyes and a mop of brown hair and looked rather frightened.

“What’s your name?” asked Belle more softly, worried she’d scare him away.

“R-Rumple,” said the little boy.

            “Hi Rumple,” said Belle. “I’m Belle.”

“Hi,” he said softly.

“What are you doing under all the pillows?” asked Belle.

“Hiding,” said Rumple.

“Like hide and go seek?” asked Belle.

“Sorta,” mumbled Rumple. “Whatcha doing?”

“Reading,” replied Belle, somewhat smugly. “I can read all by myself. Can you?”

“Uh-huh,” Rumple nodded, knocking another cushion down the pile.

“Really?” asked Belle, impressed. She hadn’t met another child her own age yet who could read. Maybe he wasn’t telling the truth. “What’s your favourite book?” she quizzed him.

“Cat in the Hat,” said Rumple quickly.

“Mine too!” exclaimed Belle.

Suddenly, Rumple popped back down into his mountain of cushions and a second later came back up holding something in his hand.

Belle looked. It was “the Cat in the Hat.”

“Here,” he said softly and held it out to her. “If you’re looking for it, I don’t need it. I have ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ down here, too.”

“Thank you,” said Belle as she took the book. “Do- do you want to read it together?” she asked nervously.

“Okay,” whispered Rumple, without moving out from inside his mound of cushions.

Belle picked up the blue cushion she’d originally coveted and sat down. She pulled a maroon cushion up beside the blue one for Rumple.   “Come here, sit with me,” she said and patted the free cushion.    

“B-but my castle!” Rumple said to Belle, indicating the mound of cushions around him. “It’ll get wrecked!”

But Belle wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was already reading the book, fully immersed in the story.

Rumple watched her read. He was impressed. She didn’t even have to move her lips. He noticed she smiled a lot. She had on a pretty blue dress. Her hair was brown like his. She looked nice. She wouldn’t make fun of him, he was sure. He wanted wanted _wanted_ to go sit there beside her! So gathering up all his courage, he took big gulp of air and crawled out from under his castle of cushions, to sit beside her.  

She smiled up at him as he plopped down beside her on the cushion.

He gave her a little smile back. “Hey,” he said and did a shy little wave.

“Hi,” said Belle. Then her eyes went big as she glanced down and saw the cast on his leg. “Did you break your leg?”

“Sorta,” he said, blushing furiously.

“Sorta?” she asked him curiously.

“A long time ago,” he half-whispered. “Only it never got fixed then, so they have to fix it with operations now.”

“Oh,” said Belle, nodding sagely. She knew about operations.   That’s why her mum was in the hospital and she couldn’t see her all the time. Her dad said she was still recovering. That’s why they had to move here, to be close to the special hospital her mum was at. That’s why she had to start this new school in the middle of the year and stay in the little apartment that didn’t have a nice backyard. Belle thought about her old school and her old house. Her dad said they’d be back there by the summer, when the doctors said her mum was better and they could all go home and be a proper family again. Sometimes, when Belle felt sad, she wondered if it was really true, if things would really be back to the way they were again. Sometimes it just felt like one of those things grown-ups tell little kids, to make them less scared.

“I still don’t walk good yet,” confessed the little boy. “That’s why Mummy Kate takes me in the stroller—not because I’m a baby. So don’t listen if they say that because it’s not true. I’m older’n all of ‘em anyway.”

“Really?” asked Belle. “How old are you?”

            Rumple blushed. He really didn’t want to tell Belle he was all of six, almost seven years old and still in kindergarten. Not to mention still one of the smallest in the class. She’d think it was too weird. But maybe if he made up a really high number, maybe then she’d be suitably impressed. He thought of the biggest number he could think of. “I’m three hundred!” he said quickly.

“Wow!” said Belle. “That is really really really old.”

“Yes,” said Rumple importantly. “Mummy Chris says I am ‘ever so mature.’”

Belle giggled as Rumple imitated a very proper woman’s accent. “You’re funny,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Rumple and blushed bright red.

“Now come on,” said Belle, “you havta listen to me read now. I’ll read and you listen and then you can read and I’ll listen, deal?”

“Deal,” said Rumple.

“The sun did not shine it was too wet to play, so we sat in the house all that cold, cold wet day…” began Belle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Benched

On the Bench a Week Before

 

Every day at recess Rumple sat on a bench near where the teachers stood on a little rise of grass by the playground, so they could supervise the other children at play. 

Recess was his favourite time of day. It was the one time nobody tried to get him to do anything or “participate” in various annoying classroom activities. Sometimes the teachers on duty would attempt conversation with him and he would talk with them. When he knew lots of other kids weren’t watching or listening he found he could talk to grown-ups who weren’t his foster mums without so much trepidation. 

Sometimes another child would get in trouble and be “benched.” This was the worst for Rumple, because usually said child would be of the noisy, bullying variety, pulled off the playground for pushing other kids or taunting them. In those circumstances Rumple would go to the very edge of the bench and sit quietly trying to fade into the wood, so the other child didn’t notice him or think him worthy of interest. With other teachers in close proximity and the bully’s buddies not around to impress, the other child usually would be fairly cordial, but still Rumple was scared. 

Even the most polite child would get bored and begin to ask him questions. Why did he sit on the bench every recess, for example? Once they found out it wasn’t because he was extra bad, they started asking about his injury, his accent, and how come they so rarely saw him at school. All of these topics, even the most seemingly innocuous ones, brought bad memories the small boy didn’t want to think about. He was always glad when the other child was released from being benched and allowed back on the playground again. None of the punished children bothered to stick around to play after being released, which he was more than fine with. Yes, he was more than happy to be benched indefinitely, as long as he didn’t have to deal with them, he told himself firmly.   
Only, that wasn’t really true, was it? As much as the other children’s presence discomforted him, playing alone all the time could grow rather tedious.

He made faint motor sounds under his breath as he pushed a toy car along the wood slates of the bench, pretending it was a race track. 

Suddenly, there was movement out of the corner of his eye and a sound like “ooF!” and before he knew it someone had sat himself down on the bench, causing his toy car to fall down into the crack between the slats. 

Rumple looked up, eyes large, feeling angry at the newcomer’s carelessness. Now he would have to crawl under the bench to find it, not an easy thing for him to do without getting dirty and he hated being dirty.

“Ooops,” said the smiling boy sitting opposite him. “Didn’t mean to. Let me get that for ya,”

The new boy scampered off underneath the bench and emerged with the red toy car which he handed back to Rumple.

Rumple took the car without saying thanks and resumed playing, trying to pretend the other boy wasn’t there.

“My name’s Victor,” said the blonde haired boy without being asked. “I’m in grade 2! I like Pokemon! And making inventions! I haven’t been naughty! I’m here because I broke my elbow. I was going up the slide the wrong way with Ruby and then it was slippery and she got in my way and nudged me off by mistake and I fell off. Okay, maybe we were being kind of naughty after all,” he shrugged with one shoulder. “My brother Gerhardt is in the cadets, did you know that? I want to be in the cadets when I’m older. Wanna lookit my cast?” He unzipped his windbreaker, without waiting for Rumple’s assent and showed off his cast underneath. It was neon blue and made his arm look like a big letter “L.” It went from his hand up to his armpit and looked twice the size of his other arm. “They said I can get it off in six weeks! So, what happened to you?” 

Rumple looked warily at the other boy. It appeared Victor wouldn’t be leaving any time soon.


	3. A Wish

“What’s your name?” persisted Victor, undaunted, determined to break through the smaller boy’s silence. “My name’s Victor!”

“I know,” said the smaller boy, in irritation. “You already told me.”

“So you can talk!” grinned Victor.

“Oh course I can talk,” frowned Rumple, “and anyways, my name’s Rumple.” 

“Can I see your Hot Wheels car?” asked Victor.

Holding his car close to his body, Rumple studied Victor carefully. Victor didn’t look like a thief, but if life had taught Rumple anything, it was that you could never be too sure. He knew if Victor took his toy and ran away with it, he’d never be able to get it back. 

“Do you want to play with my Ninjago?” suggested Victor, popping the Lego toy out of his pocket. 

Rumple eyed the Ninjago with interest. He’d never played with one before. It looked exciting. “How about a deal?” he suggested brazenly.

Victor perked up.

“We exchange toys for this recess, but you have to gimme my car back at indoors time, okay?” 

“Sure,” said Victor and the two boys traded toys. “Just be careful with it, all right?”

Rumple nodded. He was always careful, ever since he fell down the stairs when he was five.

He remembered that he’d been able to hide what happened from his father for several days. Malcolm had been on a bender and oblivious to everything. Rumple simply told his father he felt ill and wanted to stay in bed with the covers over him. Malcolm had accepted it, leaving him some juice and cereal and cold pizza to eat and the TV on to keep him entertained. Sometimes his father could be surprisingly generous. There were moments when Rumple could see how bad his dad felt for how things had turned out with their little family after Rumple’s mother died. Sometimes he got maudlin and talked to Rumple about her, but try as he might little Rumple couldn’t remember her. He only knew her face from the pictures in the little album his father kept tucked under his pillow. Sometimes, when his father was out, Rumple looked at it and tried to see if his face resembled hers in the mirror. It saddened him that he looked more like his father. He didn’t want to be like him. 

It seemed Leroy, the junkie who’d been sleeping on the couch, had been blamed for breaking the bannister by the stairs. Rumple heard them arguing about it in the kitchen below him one night. He expected Leroy to deny it, but as Leroy couldn’t remember much of what had happened for the past few days, he had to admit it was possible. Rumple was secretly happy that no one thought to blame him, but then felt terribly guilty when he realized that Leroy was being forced to leave the house on account of the bannister. Sometimes he still wondered where the man had gone.

After awhile he realized he no longer had to hide in bed, only leaving once in a while to go to the bathroom. His father didn’t come home for a day and Rumple needed food. He crawled downstairs and found an unopened bag of potato chips and more juice boxes. Clutching his bounty to his chest he limped off down the hall angling for the stairs, when suddenly, his father entered the house. 

“Hey there Rupert,” said Malcolm, (Rupert was his real name), “wassamatter with you?” 

“Nothing,” whispered Rumple.

“Why’re you walking funny then?” asked Malcolm.

“I fell on the stairs,” admitted Rumple, trembling. 

“Humf, serves you right then. Teach you to be more careful next time, boy. Here, give me those chips.”

“Uh-huh,” nodded Rumple, regretfully handing over the chips. His stomach was grumbling. At least he was able to get away without being hit. Carefully, carefully, he crawled upstairs with the juice boxes hidden in the front pocket of his hoodie. Inside his nest of blankets on the mattress in his room he held tight to his dump truck and sucked every last drop of apple juice from the boxes. 

On the TV he watched children laughing and playing outside, throwing around nerf water footballs. If he imagined very very hard he could just see himself with them, running and playing with the water footballs. He could pretend he was the strongest and fastest of all of them. In his imagination they were all his friends and he was never lonely or hungry or in pain again. 

Sometimes at night his leg would hurt so badly, he’d risk waking up his father, just to get some medicine to make the hurt go away. Sometimes he was too scared to ask and just lay there, staring up at the ceiling holding his Spiderman close beside him. More than anything he wished his Spiderman was real. Rumple desperately wanted a real friend, just one, one real friend who really cared about him. If he could just have that, he thought, everything else would be all right. 

He’d seen a movie once, about a little wooden boy who wished upon a star and then his wish came true. He couldn’t see the stars in their little room, but he could see the streetlights outside in the night and they were kind of like stars. He wished on the streetlights night after night that the world would bring him a friend. 

And then one day his wish came true.


	4. Astrid

It was a rainy Saturday when Astrid first appeared in the broken down house by the river that Rumple, still called Rupert in those days, his father, and a constantly changing assortment of riff raff and junkies called home. 

He knew it was a Saturday because there were cartoons on the TV and he knew it was rainy because of the tap tap tap of the raindrops on the skylight in the bedroom he shared with his father, that and his leg was hurting. 

All the shows on TV were about a holiday called Halloween. Rumple gathered that it involved people dressing up as magical spooky creatures and kids going door to door collecting candy. 

He had been foolish enough to ask his dad if they could go together. His father gave a short bark of a laugh and told him sure, he’d take him, if he was willing to quit playing the invalid long enough to walk up and down the street with him collecting candy. Rumple demurred. 

He wasn’t playing at anything. Ever since his fall downstairs he couldn’t walk properly anymore. He crawled about now because it was easiest. It made him feel ashamed, like a baby. Mostly he just stayed in his room on his futon mattress on the floor in the nest of blankets and pillows he’d made for himself, protected in his nest of wool, felt and cotton, watched TV, played with his toys and slept. He ate there too, squirreling away the food he stole from the pantry when everyone was out during the day. Hiding it under the blankets so he’d have something to eat when his father was away or came home without bringing him something. 

It was a sad and lonely existence. He missed those times before his father had got so heavily into the drugs when they would go out to the nearby park and play and his dad would push him on the swings and they would kick a ball around the big field together. It wasn’t much, but those were the best times little Rumple could remember. Although really he wasn’t “little Rumple” at the time. His name was Rupert. That’s what his father called him and what everyone in the house who didn’t call him “kid” called him too. 

The name nickname “Rumple” had come through Astrid. Everything good in his life had come through Astrid, he thought wistfully. 

That rainy Saturday he’d fallen asleep, snuggled up under his comforters and blankets in front of the TV, hidden from view. 

He woke up a bit and was going to poke his head out, but then he heard his father and some other grown-ups talking and laughing. He felt scared and went quiet, hiding like a mouse in his hole under the blankets where no one would notice him, hoping the other grown-ups and his father would leave soon. 

He could be perfectly quiet and motionless when he wanted. It was a skill he’d long since perfected. 

Then, without warning someone sat on him. He yelped and the person shot straight off his bed. “What the--?”

Much to his consternation he was hauled out from under his protective blanket-shield. 

“Well, now,” said a female voice. “Who’s this then? Did I hurt you, sweetie?”

The little boy shook his head.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman said. “I didn’t realize there was a person there! It just looked like some rumpled sheets on the bed! I didn’t realize you were under there! Poor little rumpled thing, look Malcolm, he’s shaking like a leaf. Look at his little tatty clothes,“ she said, pulling at his torn cardigan. “I wonder whose he is.”

“Pssh, that’s just Rupert, my son,” said Malcolm irritably.

Malcolm noticed Astrid’s quick glance of disapproval and quickly tried to mask his dislike for his son. 

Gently, Astrid picked the little boy up and sat him in her lap. 

She sniffed his hair and made a face.

“Uh, Malcolm, you might want to bath him once in a while.” 

Rupert, “the little rumpled thing” looked up at Astrid with eyes, overlarge in his small peaked face. 

Astrid smiled gently down at him. He noticed she had golden sparkles on her eyelids and her cheeks were round and pink. Her hair was pink too and her clothes were bright and colourful. She was without a doubt the most beautiful, colourful person he’d ever seen. Maybe she was magical, like the fairies in that cartoon he watched on TV, he thought.

“That’s just Rupert’s pathetic act. Don’t get taken in by him. He just does it to get attention,” his father dismissed him. “You wait and see, it’ll get tiresome for you too in a bit. Always pretending his leg hurts and whining that he’s sick. Spends all day lazing around playing with that stupid Spiderman toy and watching TV. Weird kid. Barely even talks. Think he’s not right in the head maybe.” 

Malcolm shrugged his big shoulders. “Now when I was that age I was outside all the time, running around playing football, getting into scrapes. Modern childhood. Feh!” Malcolm snorted. 

This was so unjust that Rumple began to cry, soft, nearly silent sobs, his narrow shoulders shaking. 

Malcolm rolled his eyes in disgust. “Right, I’ll be downstairs. Come join me when you’re bored over the little actress over here.”

Then Malcolm went downstairs and Astrid and the little boy were left alone. 

Rumple reached out to touch her pink hair to see if it was real. It was! He gasped in delight and she laughed, a pretty tinkling sort of laugh. 

“Are- are you fairy?” he asked her hoarsely. He was so unaccustomed to talking that he forgot the “a” before “fairy” and his voice was barely audible.

“What ‘s that?” she asked encouragingly.

“Are you a fairy?” he asked, willing his small voice to be stronger. 

This question brought a new peal of laughter from the visitor and she gave him a gentle squeeze. “Oh you are just the cutest little rumply thing ever!” she said. “I’m so glad I came here! I just know we are going to be super best friends!”

Rumple, for that’s how he’d now been transformed by her, grinned shyly up at her. A friend at last! A real friend!

“Now come on! I think it’s time you had a bath. Get that cute little face of yours squeaky clean, yeah? Trust, me, your dad won’t even recognize his little boy when we’re done! I’ll give you a haircut too. You know I used to be a hairdresser when I lived in me old place. I still have my old barber scissors too. You’ll look smashing, wait and see!”

Then Astrid got up and began to pad out of the room, clearly expecting Rumple to follow. 

Desperate not to let her out of his sight and seeing no other alternative he crawled after her. She turned back to see him on the floor and her eyebrows bunched together with worry. 

“Why are you crawling? Can’t you walk none?” she asked him. 

Rumple just shook his head, thinking she was going to make fun of him like some of the other denizens of the house, like his father. 

“Oh well, that’s alright,” she said and before he knew it, he’d been hoisted up by his armpits . “There! You’re not heavy at all!” 

After that Astrid drew the tub. Much as Rumple hated to take off his clothes, he was willing to do it for her. And when he sat in the tub full of warm water and Astrid squeezed a handful of orange scented shampoo onto his head, he felt wonderfully happy. His leg felt relaxed in the nice warm water and his skin felt good as she scrubbed his little body down with a washcloth. Later on she cut his hair and he laughed as all the little pieces of brown fell down all around him. She found some clean clothes for him in his dresser that he’d not known were there, too. They were only a little snug and slightly gray from washing.

“Look at you!” she crowed. “Like a brand new boy!” 

When he looked at himself in the mirror and at Astrid grinning out proudly behind him he really did feel like a brand new person.

Maybe he really was brand new like Astrid said. She was magical after all, he thought, he was sure of it. 

Could it be that his leg was all better now? He hopped down from the chair where he’d been sitting on with Astrid, trying to land with both feet. 

And was instantly on the ground howling with pain. Quickly he stopped shouting, worried she would be angry or his father would come. He looked around frightened. 

“Oh Sweetie,” said Astrid and held him in her arms and rocked him until the pain went away. For a brief second he had a flash of memory of some warm female arms holding him like this long long ago and rocking him in a different room someplace else. A faint memory came to him of blue flowered wallpaper and was gone. 

“Let’s have a look, shall we?” said Astrid, in a business-like fashion.

He was frightened, but Astrid pulled up both his trouser legs anyway. “Ah well look at that,” she said sadly. 

And he noticed, for the first time, after what had probably been a year or more, that his right leg, the one that hurt all the time, looked smaller and skinnier and shorter too than the left one. It bent to the side below his knee in an odd sort of way. Just looking at it made Rumple feel sad because he knew in his heart it would never get better now.

“I wonder. Was you born early perhaps? I had a cousin like that back in England when I was young like, had cerebral palsy, used to wear a brace on his leg, use a stick. They’ll probably fit you for one when you’re a little older, so you can walk proper and get around where you like,” she told him. “Didn’t use to stop him none, so don’t you worry! We’re none of us perfect, I guess,” she said sadly and her eyes got a far away look as if she wasn’t thinking about him at all when she said it, but about herself. “At least you’re light, eh?” she said and picked him up on her back. 

Holding onto Astrid’s neck as she went down the stairs Rumple marveled at this strange new idea. She seemed to drop these pearls of hope and sunshine for him, without even trying, without even being aware of what she was doing. His father was so stingy with his gifts and affections, that this largesse of kindness amazed him.

She had been so matter of fact, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, wear a brace, use a stick, walk proper and get around where you like. He had no idea of what she was on about and thought a stick was something you found on the ground that fell from a tree, but she obviously knew what she was talking about. He thought of the world outside the broken down house that he hadn’t seen in what felt like forever, where his father no longer brought him because he was too slow and whiny about walking, that he thought he’d never see again. 

He remembered the park with the sand pit and the slide and the swings. He wondered, was it too much to ask…

“Astrid?” he said softly as she made the bottom step and came out on the main floor.

“What’s up Rumple?” she asked cheerfully.

He could see the front door from where they were standing. On the mat were his sneakers and crocs which he hadn’t worn for ages. 

“Could we go to the park?”

And then they did! Rumple could barely believe it. They went to the park and Astrid put him in the swing and he went back and forth up high like he was flying, soaring, touching the tops of the trees. He scrambled in the sandbox and felt the soft grains between his toes and they made castle towers together with a Styrofoam cup and Astrid taught him a funny song and made him sing it out loud. He didn’t even know he could sing. She praised his voice profusely, but secretly he thought Astrid’s voice was the most beautiful. “I used to be a singer, for real, “ she told him in confidence. Astrid was always telling him about different jobs she’d had. It seemed to him there’d been so many. 

She picked him up and made him fly around like an airplane. The only part of the day he didn’t like was when he had to sit on a bench for a while, while Astrid went to talk to some guys in big puffy jackets standing beside the bleachers near the baseball diamond. They gave her paper bags and when she came back Rumple asked if it was candy and if he could have some.

“No,” she said shortly. “It’s not candy and I don’t want to see you ever touch anything you see in a bag like this, okay? Stuff in these bags is strictly for grown-ups.”

“Okay,” he nodded, frightened of how her voice had suddenly gone all harsh and scary, almost like his dad’s. 

“Promise me, you won’t ever touch one of these bags, all right?”

“Okay, I promise,” he said weakly. 

“Ah, there’s my good little Rumples,” she said and swung him up in her arms. He buried his face into her perfumed shoulder and sighed with happiness.

On the way home they stopped by Macdonald’s and Astrid got him a happy meal with a toy car inside and praised him for eating all his fries which she called “chips” in her funny, sing-song way of talking. He mimicked her voice back, trying to sound just like her and it made her laugh. 

Things were a little different at home now, too, he noticed. He thought perhaps Astrid had had some kind of talk with his father, because Malcolm stopped calling Rumple lazy all the time. 

One day, one of his father’s friends was over and caught sight of Rumple crawling about and asked Malcolm gruffly what was wrong with him.

Rumple braced himself for Malcolm’s usual answer saying “Rupert’s just a big baby, always looking for attention, trying to make you feel sorry for him.” But this time Malcolm just said, “Ah leave him be. Astrid says his leg’s deformed and he ought to go to a doctor, get him fitted up for a brace or something. But you know how it is, you go to the clinic, takes all day waiting and then they just send you one to someone else, no point to it, I mean what’re they going to do anyway?” he shrugged. 

“What do you do with him when you take him out?” the friend asked.

“I don’t,” said Malcom, feeling a little guilty about it for the first time. “I just used to get angry at him, thought he was slowing me down on purpose. Maybe if I had something to push him in we could…” 

And the next day Malcolm woke Rumple up early to proudly tell him that he’d nicked him a cool, special present. Not waiting for Rumple to get down the stairs on his own he picked him up on his shoulders and brought him down to see what it was. 

Rumple stared. It was a stroller. 

“So what’d you think?”

“Aren’t those for babies?” asked Rumple, who was growing more accustomed to voicing his opinion, now that he was hanging out more with Astrid. 

“Hmmmph!” scowled his father. “I try to do something nice for you and…”

“I love it Dad, I love it!” cried Rumple eagerly, wanting to appease his father. 

“Yeah, well maybe Astrid can take you out in it this morning. I need to go see a friend about some medicine.”

Even if he’d at first been a little leery of the stroller and thought it was for babies, Astrid quickly made him see how wrong he’d been to look down at it. 

“Well done Malcolm!” Astrid cheered when Rumple tentatively showed her his father’s new acquisition. 

“Now you and me can go on adventures together!” Astrid told Rumple. “I can take you all over the city without your leg getting sore or my arms hurting from carrying you. Now where do you want to go first?” 

“On adventures!” said Rumple because he didn’t really have any idea what was out there, he only knew he wanted to see it. He tried to imagine where Astrid would take him, but as he couldn’t remember much of the city other than the street they lived on with the park and the shops, he had no idea what he wanted to see, but trusted Astrid that they would have fun.

And true to her word Astrid did take him on adventures. They went all over town, to parks with real ducks in them that let him feed them, to the library, to the museum on the children go free days, to a big mall, where Astrid got lots of new clothes for him and hid them underneath his bum in the stroller so the ladies at the checkout couldn’t see. They even went to a movie theatre to see “Frozen” three times because Astrid was friends with the girl at the ticket booth from her exotic dancing days. 

Astrid was like a mum and a big sister and best friend all combined. She talked to him like he was smart and could understand everything she said, even though sometimes he didn’t and he had to ask her to explain things to him. She never got mad at him for that. She said it was a sign that he was paying attention. He felt good about himself when he was with Astrid, because Astrid talked to him he felt like a grown up, someone who’s opinion mattered, whose feelings were real. 

The only two things he didn’t like about her was when she took him to her friends’ houses to get medicine. It was boring and he had to sit around and he hated it. Her medicine friends were scary too, he noticed, not like the friend with the sparkly blue eye shadow they talked with at the movie theatre. Then there were the times back home when Astrid and Malcolm took their medicine together. Rumple had come to hate the medicine even more now that Astrid was here. Malcolm habitually ignored him whether he took medicine or not, so Rumple didn’t really notice much difference, but when Astrid took it and went from doting on him, spending time colouring with him and telling him stories that made him laugh, to being a zombie who ignored him, who barely cared if he was alive or dead. It frightened him. Even though he was really young he knew that if something happened to him while Astrid was like that, she wouldn’t be there to protect him or save him. Even when Malcolm and Astrid were in the room at night with him and all three of them were together, he knew if they were on the medicine then he was really all alone. It made him scared. 

When he told Astrid how it frightened him, she sobbed and told him how sorry she was and that she’d never take the weird medicine again, but invariably after a few days of fun adventures, he’d notice her getting fidgety and strange. Soon they’d be back at the park with him in the sandbox and her talking to her “friends” behind the bleachers. He wished he was big and strong and could run fast and punch, so he could take her away from the medicine and the mean looking guys in the puffy coats. But even with all her magic, Astrid, he knew, couldn’t really change him into a brand new boy. It was all pretend. So he hid in the sandbox and watched the men pass her the paper bags. What else could he do?


	5. Birthday

On the morning of his seventh birthday Rumple woke up in the big bed in between Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris. It took him some time to realize where he was and then he remembered his nightmare from the night before and Mummy Chris coming to pick him up out of bed to take her to sleep with her and Kate where he felt safer. 

She’d asked what the nightmare was about, but he didn’t tell her. He knew better than to talk about Astrid in front of her and Mummy Kate. As much as they said they loved him and took care of him, he knew they didn’t believe Astrid was real. Dr. Blau thought he’d made Astrid up, an imaginary fairy friend to help him in his loneliness and troubles in his father’s house. Sometimes he wondered if they were right. The more time went by, the more he began to see that it was probably ridiculous for a boy his age to believe in fairies, especially a fairy that would push him around town in a stroller and get him to help steal stuff for her. Anyway, if she was real, where was she? Whenever he talked about her Mummy Chris and Mummy Kate got strange frowny faces. He didn’t like when they frowned or their voices got tight. He was very sensitive to such signs from adults. He’d spent many years paying attention to them, warning signs for when his father or one of the grown ups at the house was about to lose their cool. 

It hadn’t surprised Rumple that Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris slept in the same bed together. Back in the big house he’d lived in with his father and Astrid, there weren’t many beds or much space and plenty of people. Lots of people ended up sleeping together in all sorts of tangles on mattresses, sofas and beds all over the house. 

He would often wake up in the morning to go to the bathroom and stumble over people sleeping in the hall in sleeping bags or passed out right in front of the door, loudly snoring, without a pillow or blanket or anything. Once in the night he dragged himself up to pee. The light in the hall was broken and they hadn’t fixed it so he could only turn the light on in the bathroom. He was shocked to see a woman lying there, unconsciously snoring with her head on the toilet seat and half her straggly blonde hair in the bowl!

But the more he lived with Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris, that it wasn’t for lack of beds that they slept together under the big striped comforter in their peach coloured room. 

Gradually he realized that they loved each other. He wasn’t terribly shocked. He knew men could be together with other men that way, from Jeff, a friend of Astrid’s who used to crash at the house sometimes, who once explained to Astrid, when Rumple was in the room, exactly what he made his money to buy his junk with. 

He’d invited Astrid to join him, but Rumple stared disapproving at Jeff from his nest on the mattress and the intruder had had the wisdom to leave without pressing the matter.   
When Jeff was out of earshot, Rumple quickly told Astrid he didn’t like her friend and thought Jeff was crazy for wanting to take her away. 

“Oh he won’t take me away,” she promised Rumple. “No one will. You know what I told you, you little rumpled thing, we’re best mates, you and me. Ain’t nothing ever keeping us apart, I promise. ” 

Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris made him promises too. However, unlike Astrid and his father, they seemed to keep theirs. 

The first time he’d eaten lunch with them at their house, he broke a teacup by dropping it. He’d never actually used one before and was clumsy with it. Terrified they’d send him back to the big house again, he began to cry. They reassured him that they didn’t care, that nothing he did would make them send him back, that he was theirs forever, for real and truly. 

They said the words, and he nodded, pretending to believe them, to show he was a good boy, but deep inside, at the hardened shell around the core of his being he knew it couldn’t be true. They couldn’t really want him. Nobody could.

The day they first took him to the doctor, when they got the news about the “growth-plate injury” to the bone in his leg that had made it stop growing properly and all the expensive operations it would require to correct, he cried all the way home in the car. 

Sitting beside him in the backseat, a concerned Mummy Kate asked if he was upset because of what the doctor said about his leg.

Rumple shook his head. Why would he be upset? It hadn’t surprised him. He could’ve told them they didn’t have to go to a doctor to find out his leg didn’t work right and would be expensive to fix, if it was even fixable at all. Even Astrid had said it was deformed when she saw it he remembered, and she usually tried to put as good as spin as possible on things with him. 

He had been more surprised that Mummy Chris and Mummy Kate hadn’t seemed to notice or comment on it when they got him. Unfortunately, now that they knew he was defective, that a doctor had told them for sure, he was certain that they’d waste no time in sending him back. 

“No,” he’d sobbed, truthfully, unable to contain himself any longer. “It’s just that now you’ll send me back, now that you know.”

Mummy Kate’s face nearly crumpled with sorrow when she heard this. 

What had he done now, he wondered.

She put an arm gently around his narrow shoulders in the carseat. “Oh sweetie, you thought— you thought we were only keeping you because we didn’t know about your poor leg?”

He nodded. It was silly, now that he thought about it. Of course, they’d noticed. He used a bloody stick after all! It was just that he wasn’t used to the lack of comment on it and he couldn’t figure out why. The only thing he could think of was that maybe they hadn’t noticed. It had never occurred to him that they hadn’t said anything out of politeness and sensitivity to his feelings. Thinking this way was a foreign concept to him. 

“Honey, we knew all about it before we even got you. They told us at the agency. It was in your papers.”

They knew all about it! Rumples eyes went wide. Secretly, he wondered how much else they knew at the agency. 

“Honey, it doesn’t matter to us. We will never, never, NEVER take you back. You are our little boy and we love you just as you are.” 

There was a sound from the front of the car where Mummy Chris was driving. She had been silent through the whole exchange, but now he saw her reflection in the driver’s mirror and he could see, the whole time, she’d been crying. Now she smiled through her tears and winked at him. 

“She speaks for both of us,” said Mummy Chris.

And Rumple nodded solemnly from his carseat, the gears in his little head spinning. They spun and they spun and they spun and then…a crack opened in the hard shell around his heart, the shell that had appeared after he lost Astrid, to protect him from everything, to keep anyone else from getting inside his heart. And for the first time since then, he began to let his someone new in. 

And now it was his birthday. His last birthday when he turned six he’d been in the big broken down house with his father and Astrid and there hadn’t even been breakfast to eat, let alone chocolate chip pancakes and brightly wrapped presents at the table. All these things Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris had told him to expect. They knew surprises frightened him, so they made sure he knew about things well in advance. And in the afternoon he would have a party, a real party. Just a little one they’d explained when he appeared apprehensive. They understood he didn’t like being around too many people, that he got shy. 

“We’ll only invite three of your school friends, how about that?” said Mummy Chris. “Who do you want to come?”

This didn’t sound too bad to Rumple. Three people he could manage. He told her he wanted Victor and his best friend Ruby there. Rumple actually didn’t know Ruby very well. She tended to be a little boisterous for his taste, but he figured if Victor liked her and she was there, he’d be more likely to come. And most importantly of all, the real reason he actually wanted to have a party…he wanted to invite Belle. 

“I’m so proud of you!” Mummy Kate said. “Well done you with making new friends. I know it isn’t easy for you to talk to people. ”

She was right, it wasn’t easy for him to talk to people or open up with just anyone. Only with Belle. Somehow he’d been able to talk to her right from the very beginning. There was something about her that made him feel like he wasn’t being judged, not like he was with other kids, who took one look at him or heard about his background and thought they instantly knew what he was like without even talking to him. Belle was open to him in a way no other children in his class were. Somehow, he thought she understood him in a way that meant he didn’t need to explain himself, that whatever he said she’d sympathize with it.

She was kind, too. Oh she was kind to everyone, it was true, only with him, she wasn’t just kind, she connected with him, like his soul could talk to her soul. He didn’t think of it exactly in those words. He didn’t really have a good way to explain it, but inside he always felt like being with Belle was simply magic. 

There was a show on TV that Belle liked to talk about. It was called “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” Even though it was clearly a girls’ show, he was happy to watch it with her when she came over to his house. He was happy to do anything with her really, whatever Belle wanted, just to be around her. Sometimes when he was in the tub playing with his floaty toys or rolling along in the stroller with one his mums, he liked to hum the theme song. He didn’t know any of the real words except this: “Friendship is Magic.” 

It was, it really was. 

He hadn’t known about birthday cakes and what to do with them. Mummy Chris had explained that you could make a wish on your candles when you blew them out on a birthday cake. 

He thought of the wish he’d made on that star, the one that was really a streetlight so long ago, when he’d felt so sad and alone—the wish that brought Astrid to him. 

Magical Astrid, his first real friend. Maybe it would work again. If friendship was magic and birthday cake wishes worked as well as star ones.


	6. Chapter 6

Rumple and Mummy Kate stood outside on the back patio preparing the table for the guests while Mummy Chris finished her work on the cake inside. Together Rumple and Kate pulled the paper Buzz Lightyear table cloth over the table until it was even on both sides. Then Kate gave him the cups to set out while she took care of the plates and forks.

            “There all done,” Kate said. “What do you think Rum?”

            “Looks great!” he said and gave her a thumbs up. “When is everybody coming?”

            “Soon sweetie, soon.”

            “What do we do until then?”

            “Want to swing?” suggested Kate.

            “Sure!” exclaimed Rumple.

            Kate looked over at the tire swing that hung from the big poplar tree in the backyard. It had been there with the house since she and Chris first moved in and began renting. She remembered the first day they’d arrived there, their own cozy little house for the two of them—a place all their own for the very first time. She’d looked around and felt like a real grown-up married person, like she never thought she would and she just grinned ear to ear unable to believe her good fortune, to have this wonderful person in her life and to be married and to have this lovely place to live in together. She felt mature and responsible, like a real adult for the first time in her life. Of course Chris had to go and blow it all by making a beeline for the tire swing, jumping on and shouting out to Kate to push her like a little kid. It made Kate grin just remembering.

And now there wre the three of them living here. She glanced down fondly at Rumple, the little birthday boy making his careful way down the steps from the porch. It was almost like he’d lived here with them forever, she’d grown so accustomed to him and his cute little ways.

            “C’mere birthday boy!” she said and hefted him up onto her shoulder. giggled as she blew a raspberry on his bare tummy. “Look I’ve got a little sack of potatoes!” she said, the way she remembered her father once doing with her and deposited little Rumple on the tire swing. He giggled some more and kicked out his feet.

            “Help! Help! I’m falling in the hole!” he cried dramatically, as he leaned back, still holding tight to the ropes.

“Come here silly,” said Kate and pulled him up so he was sitting properly on the black rubber surface. The swing was high off the ground and his feet stuck out just above her waist. His injured leg was in a lighter, shorter cast now. They’d taken the big cast off a few days before, so he no longer had to use crutches. He had a gray plastic walking boot instead, to which he’d added an entire pack’s worth of bat symbol stickers Kate had bought him. (Batwoman was her favourite superhero, as she shared a first name with the main character Kate Kane).

            “How’s the boot?” she asked him.

            “Needs more stickers.”

            Kate laughed. “All right, you ready to fly?”

            “Yeah!”

            “Whee!” she cried and gave him a push.

            Just then the screen door opened and Chris poked her head out.

            “Houston! We have a problem!”

            “Houston? Who’s Houston?” asked Rumple.

            “Me, she means me,” sighed Kate. “What’s wrong now Chrissy?”

            “The cake’s not coming out of the pan!”

            “Did you try digging it out with a spoon?”

            “What? No, that’ll just wreck it! Come on, give me a hand, you always get it out perfectly!”

            “All right, all right” said Kate. “Just a second.”

            She prepared to pick Rumple up to take him off the swing.

            “No, I just got on!” he insisted holding tightly to the ropes.

            “Oh all right, but you stay put young man. I don’t want you jumping down from there and hurting your foot again, all right?”

            “Okay,” he said.

            “Just wait for me to come back to get you down, okay?”

            “Uh-huh,” he nodded.

            Now that he no longer had to wear such a long cast, pumping on the swing was much easier, but he still couldn’t make himself go very high. The tire swing was strung to a thick tree limb that was slightly uneven, making the tire list to one side and spin, a tendency it had anyway, being round, instead of going straight back and forth like the swings at the park. If you weren’t careful it would bump into the tree trunk, which you could take advantage of if you wanted by pushing off with your feet or hands to gain a little more momentum. However when Mummy Kate saw him doing it she told him not to, because of his cast. He didn’t understand why. He’d bumped it loads of times by mistake already. It was made of thick plaster and wouldn’t crack, but she always worried.

It was funny because it didn’t even hurt him that much anymore, and back a long time ago when it truly _had_ bothered him all the time, no one really thought anything of getting him to do all sorts of things on his own. But Kate and Chris were different than his father and the people in the old house. Occasionally it annoyed him that they didn’t let him do whatever he wanted, but most of the time he enjoyed being the focus for their concern and attention. In fact, he’d grown so used to have attentive adults around all the time, it unsettled him a bit to be alone for a few minutes every now and again. It was strange to him, because he remembered going for entire days without seeing another person when he was small, just scrunched up in his blanket nest in the room, eating his stored away food, waiting for his father to come home. And now when Kate left for even just a bit he got a little scared that they’d leave him like everyone else did before.  

Sometimes he worried that her and Chris would never come back, that they’d gotten tired of him. They tried to put him at ease, and now he could see them inside the house from his perch on the swing, Chris and Kate waving at him through the window as they tried to get the stubborn cake out of the pan.

He kicked his feet up and tried to pump again. He couldn’t really fly on this swing, not like the one at the park by the old house that he went to with Astrid long ago, so he let the tire spin him round and round until he felt a little dizzy. Swings aside, he really did love Chris and Kate’s backyard. The complete lack of shifty looking guys who wore coats even in warm weather was a distinct advantage to his new situation. There were no broken bottles or used condoms lying around that you weren’t supposed to touch on the ground here either. There weren’t any mean big kids in the sand pit who pushed sand on you and took your toys to play keep away and monkey in the middle with—making you the monkey every time. The only kids who came to Chris and Kate’s backyard were ones Rumple himself wanted there. Except for Emma and Neal who brought baby Henry sometimes, and Henry was too small to bully anyone. Actually, Rumple quite liked him. Emma and Neal even let him hold baby Henry if he was sitting down. They would be coming to the party too. Chris and Kate had asked him if it was okay. Of course he’d said yes, proud that he got to choose who they’d have in the house.   Not at all like his old house, he thought, where if given the power to choose who got to stay, he probably would’ve thrown everyone out except Astrid, his only friend. And now he had more friends than he could remember ever having at any time in his life.

And yet-- there was still one person he wished would be there for his birthday who he knew wouldn’t be coming. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have had a birthday last year if it wasn’t for Astrid. His father certainly didn’t get him anything. Sure, it wasn’t the biggest celebration. There wasn’t even any cake, yet somehow, Astrid still managed to get him the thing he really wanted. She’d needed his help of course, but they’d got it together, as good partners should and that had made it special to him.


	7. Belle's Gift

Belle looked around the room and sighed. Rumple’s birthday party would be starting in just half an hour and she still had no present for him. 

Yesterday her father had promised her they would go to Toys R Us to pick out something nice for Rumple for his birthday. Instead there had been a phone call from the hospital, the special call they’d been waiting for for the past six months, her father said.

The hospital said there might be a pair of new lungs for her Mum. Her Dad dropped her off at Chris and Kate’s house to play with Rumple while he sped off to the hospital to be with her Mum before she received the transplant. 

Only there hadn’t been a transplant. At the last moment the doctors decreed that the lungs they thought they’d be able to give to Belle’s mum would go to someone else instead. Her dad came back from the hospital looking devastated and they never got to go to the toy store at all. She guessed rightly that Rumple’s present was the least of his worries. Her Dad’s mood was so dark that Belle was afraid to mention it at all. At night when she was in bed, feeling excited about Rumple’s coming party she heard strange noises coming from his room, loud sobs like a grown-up crying and then the sound of her father calling out her mother’s name into the night, his voice breaking up high like a teenager boy’s. Belle clenched her stuffed horse tight to her body and squeezed her eyes shut. Even after the weird sounds stopped, it took her ages to fall asleep.

She’d had to remind her father over breakfast about the birthday party. He’d completely forgot. At least he was taking her now. She was dressed in her favourite blue flowered dress with tight blue leggings and black Mary-Jane shoes. Her dad had tried to do her hair in braids like her Mum used to for fancy occasions, but he’d made a muddle of it and in the end she’d just had to settle with a ponytail in the back. 

Belle glanced around the room as she listened to her father running the water in the bathroom. He was taking a long time. Maybe she could still give Rumple a present. She studied her toys. Which one was she willing to part with? She didn’t have many in the apartment. Most of them they’d had to leave behind in their old house when they came to live in this “temporary” place to be closer to her mum at the hospital. At last her eyes lit on her little plastic tea set. She had four cups. She could certainly spare one for Rumple. She picked up a piece of newspaper from the recycling bin and grabbed some tape from her desk. In a few moments she had wrapped up one plastic teacup. Then she popped it in a plastic shopping bag. Now all she needed was a card. She tore a piece of paper out of her school exercise book. It had blue lines on it, but it would do. She folded the paper in two and then on the outside half, in her best penmanship she wrote in felt tipped marker: 

HaPy Birf Day Rum

She went for the shortened form of his name because she couldn’t fit “Rumple” or “Rupert” on the rest of the page. She opened up the inside and thought about what to write. After nibbling on the eraser of her pencil for a bit she settled with:

You are My Best Frend!!!!!

Luv Belle!!!!

She noticed there was still a lot of space left over on the inside of the card, even after she added all the exclamation marks. She decided to draw a picture. 

She drew a picture of Rumple, making sure to include his floppy brown hair and brown eyes and slightly pointy nose and gave him a big smile. Then she drew his body, with one extra thick foot for his plastic boot thingy and put a big present in one of his hands with a huge orange bow on it as big as his head. 

She held the picture out in front of her and wriggled with joy and pride at her accomplishment. It was the best picture she’d ever made. It looked almost exactly like him! Only one thing was missing. Being ever so careful not to mess up her perfect picture she drew a little red heart next to his head and inside she wrote 

B + R

so that he would know for sure that she really and truly loved him. 

“Alright honey, time to go!” her father called up to her. His voice sounded a little funny, like he had a stuffed up nose. 

“Coming Dad!” said Belle and came down the stairs clutching her plastic bag, with the wrapped up teacup and card inside.


	8. Rumple's Birthday Party

Rumple stood with Mummy Chris watching excitedly through the window by the side of the door as the first guest came up their front walk. It was Victor accompanied by his older brother Gerhardt. They seemed to be taking forever. Finally Rumple could stand it no longer and pulled up the door and limped excitedly outside. 

“Victor! Victor!” he called to his friend, waving his arms. Victor ran up the steps to greet his friend and they wiggled around and hugged. Victor hadn’t had a cast for a few weeks now and Rumple always felt a momentary pang of jealousy whenever he saw him, but then Victor pushed a present wrapped in striped paper into Rumple’s arms and gave him a huge grin. The present was a big rectangular box and it rattled a bit inside. Rumple’s instantly grew wide. 

“It isn’t—“

“IT IS!” cried Victor. 

“LEGO!” they both cheered in unison and danced around as Gerhardt rolled his eyes. Kids.

“See ya after cadets bro,” he dismissed his younger sibling and trudged off in his cadet’s uniform back to his waiting mother’s car. 

“So can I see it?” asked Victor excitedly.

“See what?” asked Rumple.

“You know! What your mums got you for your birthday! The Playmobil DARK CASTLE!” exclaimed Victor. 

It was all they’d talked about on the playground for the past few days. It was the big present Rumple had received from his mums for his birthday which was actually two days before the party. The dark castle was enormous, without a doubt the biggest toy he had ever owned, with pointy black towers that nearly came up to Rumple’s shoulder. There were two floors and a dungeon inside and a funny little drawbridge he could raise and lower with a real crank. There was also a playmobil wizard with a robe covered in stars and a magic staff with a green plastic orb on the top that glowed in the dark. The wizard was Rumple’s favourite character, but there were also two knights with fancy helmets with plastic plumes on the top and even a big dragon with shiny green-gold scales and wings that moved up and down to live in the moat or the dugeon under the castle. 

Rumple and Victor played with the dark castle in pure bliss. Victor had brought one of his own playmobil people with him in the pocket of his jeans, a little scientist figure in a funny high-collared lab coat that he liked to be. Rumple of course, played the wizard.

Soon Ruby came along toting the shaggy stuffed wolf she took with her everywhere. They pretended the wolf was menacing the dark castle and the wizard had to use his magic staff and the scientist had to use his invention (which turned out to be a robot dragon) to fight the man-eating wolf. In the kitchen the adults drank punch and talked among themselves. It was all very exciting. 

Eventually, Emma and Neal arrived with baby Henry and Rumple was allowed to hold him, sitting down of course, so he was in no danger of dropping him. Baby Henry was so tiny and fragile that it was important to be extra careful, Neal explained. Henry was only just starting to lift up his bobbly little head on his own and roll over. He’d also started to to reach out his tiny hands to grab at things close by. Even though Emma insisted baby Henry’s eyes were unfocused still, and he probably couldn’t see much beyond what was directly in front of him yet, he still somehow always managed to grab Rumple’s nose every single time the older boy held him. 

Usually Rumple was very particular about how people touched him. He hated being hugged or picked up by people he didn’t know or holding other kids’ hands if they seemed the least bit untrustworthy. He even hated having his hair ruffled by strangers. But somehow Henry could yank at his hair all he wanted or grab his nose or even punch his tiny fists into his chest without Rumple minding it one bit. Even though he hardly knew baby Henry at all, he wondered if this was what it felt like to be a big brother. 

Rumple was so consumed with playing with baby Henry, that he missed the doorbell ringing. Kate went to answer it, only to see Belle and her father Maurice standing on the doorstep. Kate’s gaze softened as she spied how tired poor Maurice looked. When he’d come to pick up Belle after her impromptu playdate the day before, he’d explained about what had happened with the lungs that were supposed to go to Belle’s mother. 

“If only people understood how important it was,” he sobbed. “They die and just throw their organs away to the worms because of some stupid religious prejudice, meanwhile they could be saving so many lives, not just of the people who are actually sick, but of all the people who care about that sick person. I wish I could go to those people, every single one of them who find themselves wondering whether this is the right thing to do and show them little Belle and explain how much she needs her mum, how much I need her. Oh--” His voice broke at this and he sobbed plaintively on Kate’s shoulder. 

Kate patted him on the back and tried to comfort him as best she could, but it all felt so horribly inadequate. Anything she said sounded silly and useless to her, like trying to cover a gaping wound with a tiny band-aid. After a while Maurice collected himself and took Belle home with him, despite Kate’s offer that Belle could spend the night if it was easier for him. 

That night Kate held Chris extra close to her in bed and made sure to tell her how much she loved her before she turned out the light. Often Chris’s snoring irritated her, but that night all she could think of was how grateful she was to hear the sound, to be reminded that her partner was there, healthy and safe and warm beside her. 

Her heart went out to Maurice, wherever he was, for she could well imagine him trying in vain sleep that night, after such a day of roller coaster emotions. She could see him in his cold bed all alone, desperately trying to stifle his sobs so little Belle wouldn’t hear through the thin walls of their apartment. Kate didn’t pray often, but that night she sent up a prayer from her bed, hoping that Belle’s mother, Rose would get a new pair of lungs in time and that Maurice and Rose would be able to raise Belle together again soon.

“Look Rum! It’s Belle!” she called out to Rumple.

“Belle!” he exclaimed and his already happy face beamed like a sun. 

Emma came and took baby Henry back and Belle came over to Rumple.

“Here Rumple, I have a present for you. I- I know it’s not that good, but I made part of it myself and you know stuff was going on with my Mum and Dad had to go to the hospital and I couldn’t buy you a nice present like everyone else and I’m really sorry Rum, I am! But I hope you like it anyway!” she said, her words tumbling out of her in a torrent of speech.

Gently, Rumple took the plastic bag from Belle. “Thanks Belle. I know whatever it is, it’s going to be my favourite.”

“But Rumple, it won’t, I couldn’t get you a real present, like I explained I couldn’t get to the—“

“I know,” he said, brushing away her protestations. “But it’ll still be the best ‘cause it’s from you.” 

“For really real?” Belle asked, still not quite believing him. 

“For really real,” he answered back with a smile. 

“Oh Rum!” she exclaimed, overcome with emotion, with all the feelings that had been swirling around inside her since the whole thing with her mother had started and she’d gone to the new school and met Rumple, the boy she now thought of as her best friend. 

Quickly, quickly, so fast that it was like the darting of a little fish coming up for a breath at the surface of the water, afraid to linger lest the bigger fish gulp it up; Belle bent down over Rumple. Busy as he was with the process of getting to his feet, he didn’t have time to anticipate it as she bent down and kissed him, a quick peck on the left cheek. Rumple was so surprised he forgot that he’d been trying to get up and sat back down on his bottom again. 

Humming a little tune, a satisfied Belle skipped off to join Ruby in the other room, leaving Rumple in a daze behind her. 

Blushing a little Rumple glanced around, but no one seemed to have notice Belle kissing him. With an extra jolt of energy he grabbed onto the arm of the sofa and pulled himself up to his feet in half a second. 

Belle peeked her head out from the doorway to the living room to see if he was coming.  
“Hey Rumple we’re going to play pin the wand on the wizard!” 

“Wait, I’m coming!” said Rumple and followed her, still clutching the plastic bag with his precious gift from Belle inside it.


	9. Longing for Tight Pants

Tight Pants

Since moving in with Mummy Kate and Mummy Chris Rumple had received many new clothing items, far more than he’d ever had before in his short life. Moreover they all fit him. 

With his dad he’d often have to wear things that were too small for him because his Malcolm never remembered to get him anything new as he grew. The clothes Astrid gave him, were mostly ones she stole and they were all the wrong sizes too, mostly too large, because when you stole stuff you had to go for whatever was closest at hand when the cashier or shop assistant was looking the other way and had no time to get a proper fit. 

Just wearing clothes that weren’t too big or too small impressed Rumple enough that it took him a while to realize that the pants he wore weren’t the same as those of the other kids in the class. But once he did realize it, the fact began to bother him. 

Rumple’s pants were all sweatpants except for one pair of track pants he had with snaps up the side that had to be left partially unsnapped to accommodate his cast and these had a tendency to flap rather awkwardly.

The other kids he noticed only wore sweatpants for gym. The rest of the time they wore lots of different things like khakis, cargo pants, overalls, jeans, courdorys, tights, leggings, skirts, stretch pants. Belle even had something she called “skinny jeans” made of an amazing stretchy fabric with patterns like leopard print spots on them.   
The coolest boys in the class also had similar boy versions of these sorts pants in black or denim, though they usually didn’t have patterns. 

Although Rumple didn’t stick to the bench at recess as much as he used to now that Belle and Victor were his friends, in class he still preferred to observe and watch the other students. Being shy and observant, he was good at noticing things and once he noticed something he didn’t easily forget it. The thing with the pants stuck with him. He tried to forget it, but it bothered him. More than anything else, he secretly coveted a pair of tight stretchy pants. He knew they weren’t just for girls. Athletes on TV wore them and bicyclists he observed on his way to school wearing spandex that showed off their bums, everybody it seemed had tight pants, everyone except him. 

One day, around a month, back when he still had a plaster cast, Mummy Chris helped him get ready for school, laying his clothes out on the bed for him to choose. “There you go Rum, which pants do you want, the grey or the red?” She held up two pairs of sweatpants expectantly. 

He hadn’t meant to say anything, not really, and he was grateful for everything they gave him, but sometimes, sometimes a thing just had to be said. 

“Uh, Mummy Chris?”

“Yes, Sweetie?” 

He smiled he liked when she called him that. It made him feel like he was loved and he took courage from it. 

“Um, why are all my pants the same?”

“Uh, they’re not the same. Look this one’s red and this is gray.” 

He looked down and wriggled his toes into the soft blue material of the rug on the floor, feeling embarrassed, but bravely soldiered on. 

“The- the other kids at school—“ he said haltingly. “They wear pants that are straight and different kinds and Belle has these— what d’you call them--“ he tried unsuccessfully to indicate tightness with his hands—“skinny jeans --- with leopard spots“

“Skinny jeans? With leopard spots?” Chris made a face like she was trying to contain an entire gulp of water in her mouth, but then she couldn’t stop herself. She burst out laughing, nearly falling on the floor with surprise and mirth at the joke. Rumple so unexpectedly expressing an interest in “leopard print skinny jeans!” Oh my God, that kid was going to be the death of her!

But then she looked up and caught his eye and instantly she sobered up. The stricken expression in the little boy’s face was no joke. She quickly realized her mistake, but by then his eyes were already starting to blink like he was on the verge of tears. 

Shit. 

She felt instantly horrible. She’d just assumed he wasn’t serious. How could she think he was joking, being sarcastic? Of course he wasn’t, he was only seven years old!

She kneeled down beside him so he could look her in the eyes and see, she hadn’t meant to make fun of him. “Oh honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were serious.”

“But I am! Why can’t I wear the other kind of pants? Are they too expensive?” This idea had just occurred to him and seemed reasonable enough. Astrid and his father were always going on and on about how expensive things were, although he noticed the medicine they bought all the time from the creepy guys at the park was more expensive than anything else they complained about. 

Chris sighed. She’d read all the parenting books she could get her hands on when she and Kate had decided to adopt Rumple, but there were certain scenarios they just didn’t prepare you for. Some problems were just too specific to be covered in three hundred pages and ten chapters. She put her hand on his shoulder. “I- I kind of assumed you understood, but I guess— see other kinds of pants aren’t practical, because they wouldn’t fit over your cast. These are big enough and soft and stretchy with the elastic on the cuffs so they’ll fit over easily.” She demonstrated the stretchiness for him, so he’d get the idea. 

“Skinny jeans are stretchy,” he persisted stubbornly. “Belle said so!” 

“I know Rumple, but they aren’t that stretchy,” she sighed. “They still wouldn’t go over your cast.”

“But what if we tried really hard?”

“I’m sorry sweetie, you’ll just have to wait until—“

“I don’t wanna wait! I hate this stupid cast! It’s stupid!” he yelled and hit it with his hand. “Ow!” He looked at his hand, which was hurting now and started to cry. 

“I know Sweetie, I know” sighed Chris and wrapped her arms around him. 

He sobbed a little into her shoulder and then raised his head. “Aren’t they ever going to take it off?”

“Of course, just a few weeks more—remember we marked the date on your calendar.” Her eyes flicked over to the Toy Story calendar on the wall. 

He groaned, “But that’s in forever!”

“No it’s not. Just twenty one more sleeps. See, it’s coming up sooner than your birthday. longer until your birthday comes.” 

“And then they’ll take it off and I’ll be okay again?” he asked anxiously. 

She gave him a squeeze and kissed his forehead. “You’re already more than okay—you’re awesome and really, really brave just like the knights we read about in your book.” 

But Rumple wasn’t fobbed off so easily though. “No, no, you know what I mean—I won’t have to wear a cast or nothing and—“

“You won’t have to wear a plaster cast, but the doctor said you’ll still need an air cast and this plastic boot thing which you’ll be able to walk in, for like a month after and then—“

“Air cast! That’s stupid! What is it made of? Air?”

“I think it’s inflatable.” 

“What the fuck!”

“Rumple, watch your—“

“That’s the stupidest thing ever! How is that any different even? I thought they said I wouldn’t need it anymore! They lied! Liars!”

Chris could see he was rapidly getting steamed, little fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. 

She wasn’t worried he’d hurt her, but he did have a tendency to break things when he got angry and sometimes she worried he’d hurt himself in one of his meltdowns. Tantrums could rise out of very little and quickly get out of hand. He was one second away from losing it, she could tell. 

Life was so unfair! Rumple thought angrily. Why did adults always do this sort of thing? Tell you one thing, but then leave out al the pesky details as if they thought you wouldn’t find out in the end. Like you’re stupid, just because you’re a kid. You couldn’t trust grown-ups, not even Chris or Kate, not now, not ever. He felt dumb for thinking he could. 

Chris could see she was rapidly losing him, and tried to explain the benefits, “But listen Rumple, when you get the boot and the air cast we’ll be able to take it off and then—“

He looked up, her words piercing through the rising tide of frustration. “What?”

“I said, you’ll be able to take it off. When you go to sleep or you take a bath or go swimming. Even if you’re just at home hanging out, watching TV and not walking around much. If you’re just playing and don’t feel like wearing it, you won’t have to, okay? It’ll just be velcroed on. You won’t have to wear it all the time.”

This perked him up a bit. “Oh, I guess that is kind of better.”

“I’ll tell you what,” she improvised. “We’ll get you those tight pants then. You can have whatever colour you want, green or blue or leopard print, whatever you like to celebrate.” 

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. You can wear them underneath with the boot over top. As long as they’re tight enough it should be all right. 

A big grin lit up his face. “I’ll get them super tight, don’t worry! Yay! I love you!” he cheered. Then he wriggled into his sweatpants, cast and all, without further protest. 

Chris stood stock still and watched Rumple put on his socks, one normal sized little boy sock for his regular foot and a big grown up sock to go over his cast foot so his toes wouldn’t be cold. Kate who had all the cool socks in the house had given him some Batman ones for the purpose, which he seemed to prefer to the drab white athletic ones Chris had supplied him with, thinking they’d be more practical. 

Chris stared open mouthed at her son. Was she imagining it or did he just say… “I love you?”

She knew when they’d first contemplated fostering and adoption, that out of the two of them, she’d never be the “fun parent.” At family gatherings with little nieces and nephews Kate was the one the children had always flocked to. She could make origami swans out of napkins and do silly voices. How could Chris compete with that? Of the two of them, she knew she was the leveled headed organized one who kept things running smoothly. Kate was the one who liked comic books and video games and continued to watch Saturday morning cartoons into adulthood and spent too much money on weird looking boots. Kate made Chris laugh. She said, Chris always kept her grounded. Chris knew Kate loved her, but she always assumed the first person Rumple ever said those words to, if he was ever able to trust enough again to say them would Kate, not her. And yet… 

He’d said “I love you” to Chris alone. Over a pair of skinny jeans pants of all things. 

“C’mon Mummy Chris, we gotta get going!” he said as he sat on the floor, stuffing his library books and toy cars into his knapsack. 

Chris blinked back to attention. “C’mere, you don’t need all of those—“

Eventually his book bag was sorted and she picked him up and carried him downstairs. So they’d be going on tight pants expedition to the mall in a few weeks. She wondered what Kate would make of that. Of course, maybe Rumple would forget the whole thing, she thought. He did have several weeks until he got his cast off. 

Yeah right. Rumple had a mind like a steel trap. He didn’t forget a thing. He would remember, she thought with a smile, squeezing him gently in her arms as she put him back down on his feet on the main floor at the place where he could hold onto the railing for support.

“Hey little man,” she whispered to him as she set him down. “I love you too.” 

Rumple’s tummy felt warm and glowy as he thought of the memory, lying in bed at night nearly a month later. Mummy Chris had told the truth about not having to wear the new cast all the time. He’d spent the last few days sleeping with his leg totally bare and free for the first time in months and months. He moved his foot around experimentally under the sheets. He still wasn’t quite used to it. It was still very weak, but he could feel the sheet softly lying on his ankle. It felt strange and different, but not in a bad way. 

He’d had a really good day, playing with the Dark Castle when he got home from school for hours with Mummy Kate, not wearing a cast at home and eating real Kraft Dinner with ketchup for supper, (not the fake super-cheap kind he used to get before!) and tomorrow he had a date to buy cool pants at last!


	10. Shopping

Shopping Trip

This would never do. 

Chris looked back into the rearview mirror at the two hyper-excited kids bouncing up and down in the backseat, making short work out of her CDs in their cases as they tried to decide which one she would play and they hadn’t even left the driveway yet.

“Calm down guys or I won’t take you!” she insisted, in as severe a voice as she could manage. 

That instantly sobered them up and they were quiet.

“Now we are listening to the radio and that’s that.”

No one said anything.

“Look, you’re going to have to listen closely to me when we’re there. I don’t want anyone getting lost and wandering off, okay? If that happens we won’t do anything like this again, all right?”

They nodded, trying to look as well behaved as possible.

As soon as Chris started up the car and pulled out Belle looked over to Rumple and squeezed his hand across the narrow middle seat. 

“This is gonna be awesome!” she whispered.

“Yeah! We’re going to be matchies!”

“Can’t wait!”

As the car started up Belle unzipped her purse and took out her Hello Kitty wallet to re-check her supplies. It contained $33 dollars inside. $30 that her father had given her for the shopping trip and three that she’d saved up all on her own. The three dollars was money her dad had given her for doing chores like making her bed, wiping the dishes and cleaning her room. According to her dad she was allowed to buy one clothes item, one toy or book item and one food treat. She’d written it all down on a sticky note she’d gotten from the pad by the phone in the kitchen and folded it into the small zippered compartment of her purse. It was the first time she’d ever bought anything anywhere without her mum or dad and she wanted to be prepared. She even had a little pencil in the purse to write down for her dad exactly what she bought and how much it cost. That way when they got back home he could give her word problems for math enrichment with the numbers. 

“Guess what?” Rumple asked excitedly.

 

Satisfied she was prepared at last, Belle turned her attention to her friend. “What?” 

“I’m wearing socks that match!” he whispered, with a proud, conspiratorial grin like he had a World Series ring in his back pocket.

“Uh, that’s nice.” He was a strange boy sometimes, thought Belle. 

When they got to the parking lot, Rumple and Belle waited, holding hands like Mummy Chris told them as she popped the trunk. 

Rumple squirmed when he saw Mummy Chris lifting his stroller out of the car. He thought about what other kids in class said: “How come you have a stroller? Strollers are for babies. How old are you really?” It hurt, especially when he was really older than everyone else, too. More than anything he wanted Belle to think he was cool and being babyish definitely was not. 

Unaware of Rumple’s discomfort, Belle looked expectantly towards the sign for the mall and tried to read all the words below it. 

“Mummy Chris?” Rumple piped up.

“Yes sweetie?”

“I- I don’t need it, the stroller. I can walk good now. We can leave it, I’m all right.” 

“I know you don’t want it, but you’re still not used to walking so much without support. You’re fine now, but after a while you’re going to get tired and then I’ll have to carry you and you’re getting really big these days.”

Rumple grimaced. He hated being carried in front of other people most of all, but…

“I don’t want the stroller!” he insisted, gripping Belle’s hand a little tighter as her gaze floated back over to him and Mummy Chris and the stroller. 

“Come on, Rum, be sensible!” said Mummy Chris. 

Rumple began to sweat. He could feel his coolness level descending further the longer they stood there and it was making him frightened. Why did Mummy Chris always have to embarrass him? Why couldn’t she see he wanted to be just like other kids?

Just then, Belle touched his arm. “Hey Rum, it’s okay. Let her bring the stroller. You don’t have to sit in it. We can use it to put our shopping in!” she said, suddenly inspired. “That way we can keep our hands free and not have to carry anything. That’s what my dad does with our backpacks at the grocery store when he puts them in the cart. Let’s do that!”

“Uh, okay,” he said cautiously.

Chris gave Belle an appreciative glance as she pushed the empty stroller across the crosswalk towards the mall with a child holding onto it on either side.   
Belle caught her eye and—what the?—did the kid actually wink at her? Damn, that girl was shrewd. Have to keep an eye on that one when she was older, thought Chris. She could just see Belle running rings around her distracted father. 

Inside the department store the salespeople were busy changing the clothes on the dummies. Belle and Rumple had a good laugh at the mannequins’ nudity, trying out a few new slang words they’d heard at school for various private parts of the human anatomy. Chris rolled her eyes at this and said nothing, as the two kids nearly doubled over with laughter. Sometimes it was easy to forget, with all they’d been through that they were really just little kids at heart, with correspondingly immature senses of humour. 

In the kids’ clothing section Belle and Rumple instantly alighted on a pair of matching outfits, complete with the requisite tight pants. Chris found herself suggesting something practical to Rumple, but quickly realized he wasn’t listening, swept up in the excitement of getting to choose his own clothes for the first time.

In the change room, Chris helped Rumple out of his walking boot and let him totter off into a stall alone with his chosen items. Belle took the stall beside him and Chris sat on the small couch provided outside. 

Belle was the first to emerge wearing black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt with a shiny red vinyl guitar stitched onto it. Underneath in silver spiked letters the shirt said: “Rock and Roll!”

Chris had to admit she looked cute, although it wasn’t the sort of thing the girl’s parents usually put her in, preferring to do her up in dresses and skirts with frills, complete with sweet little pastel coloured sweaters. She hoped Belle’s father Maurice wouldn’t be too put out by her new look, but clearly Belle herself was enraptured with it as she spun around in front of the mirror and did an excited little dance. 

Chris knocked on the door to Rumple’s stall. 

“Hey buddy, you all right in there? Need some help?”

“Nope! I’m coming!” said Rumple and threw open the swinging door to the stall like a gunfighter entering a saloon. 

He limped out of the change room, resplendent in the identical outfit Belle was wearing. He stroked the smooth vinyl of the red guitar on his chest, feeling happy, thinking of   
how much Astrid would love this outfit. Sometimes, when good things happened to him like this, he imagined her there beside him and what she would say. Right now he could think of her giving him the thumbs up and saying he looked like Iggy Pop, whoever that was. 

But then Belle cried out “Matchies!” and ran over to give him a high five and he was back in reality. 

“C’mon, you have to see!” she enthused. With Belle pulling on his hand almost too quickly for him to limp after, Rumple went up to the bank of mirrors by the wall to give himself a good once over. 

Holding Rumple’s hand, Belle looked at their reflections in the multiple mirrors. Their clothes were identical, except for their socks. Rumple’s had Spiderman on them and they matched each other, just like he’d said before in the car. Suddenly, she understood why the matching socks thing was such a big deal to him. She was used to seeing him in a cast with one big grown-up sock over it. 

Rumple noticed there were other things new things about his reflection, too. He looked taller and healthier, more substantial, Mummy Kate had said, then when he’d first come to them. He was standing up on his own, too without holding onto anything, both feet on the ground, just like he used to long ago, with legs of reasonably the same length and feet of roughly the same size (okay maybe the hurt one would always be just a little bit shorter, but nobody’s perfect said Mummy Kate), and he looked just like everyone else at school, except —and—here was the good part—he looked really, really, cool—like he was in a band or something—like a rock band with Belle maybe, and these were their matching concert outfits. 

“So? What do you think?” asked Chris casually. 

“I…look…. AWESOME!” he said in awe. 

“No, WE look awesome,” Belle corrected him. 

Chris laughed. “Just like two peas in a pod.”

“Please, please, can we wear the clothes out?” asked Belle. 

“But—“

“Please Mummy?” begged Rumple. 

Chris sighed. They looked so pleased with themselves, how could she say no?

“Well, okay, but you have to go back into the changing stalls, take them off and wait for me, while I go pay, okay? Then I’ll bring them back and you can put them on, all right?”

“Uh-huh,” nodded the two children.

“Just promise me you won’t go anywhere and don’t let anyone inside unless it’s me, you got it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“All right, stay put. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” 

They removed the clothes, tossed them over the door and Chris went off to pay for them. 

Rumple sat on the bench in his stall, swinging his legs underneath him, feeling chilly in nothing but his Spiderman under-roos, but resigned to waiting so he could wear his awesome looking new clothes out.

“Psssst. Rumple!” came a whispered voice from the partition between the stalls. 

“What?” 

He noticed a little brown curly head poking up under the partition. 

“Belle! You’re not supposed to—“

But before he could get the words out, Belle had shimmied under the partition and was popping up into his stall. 

“Gah! What are you doing here?” he cried.

Belle sat beside Rumple on the bench with a shrug. “I got lonely.”

Rumple glanced at her. He read the word “Friday” written on her underpants in big purple letters and frowned. 

“Actually, it’s Wednesday.”

“Hey! Stop looking at my underwear!”

“I- I- wasn’t looking!” he protested and Belle laughed. 

She stretched out her legs in front of her, side by side with his. She had pink nail polish on her toenails, he noticed, but it was chipped and mostly grown out.

“It’s almost gone, see?” she said sadly, when she noticed him looking at her nail polish. “Mum did it for me the night before she went to the hospital. I said I’d never take it off, but now it’s almost wore away on its own,” she sighed. 

“I could make it for you again,” said Rumple stoutly.  
“It’s not the same,” sighed Belle and she looked like she wanted to cry. He knew she missed her mum very much.

“I know,” he said and put his arm around her shoulder. They bumped knees, causing him to flinch a little, expecting it to hurt, but it didn’t anymore. 

“You okay?” she asked gently.

“Uh-huh. It didn’t hurt, my leg. It used to, when it got bumped.”

“Is it all better now?” 

She peered at his hurt leg curiously. It was much skinnier than the other one, she noticed, but didn’t say anything. 

He didn’t squirm or fold his bad leg under him like he would with anyone else. He knew Belle wouldn’t say anything mean. 

“It still looks kind of skinny to me,” he admitted. “The doctor said it lost all its muscles and stuff ‘cause I didn’t use it before and then it was in a cast and that’s why it’s like that and not so strong. But they said once we do exercises and stuff the muscles will come back and then I’ll be able to run around and play soccer and baseball and jump up and down on a trampoline and go in a bouncy castle and stuff. Anyway, that’s what my mums said,” Rumple added because he wasn’t quite sure Belle would believe him. Actually, he didn’t quite believe it himself. Especially the jumping on trampolines and bouncy castles bit. It seemed so unlikely, he was afraid to hope for it. Life had taught him that hoping for impossible things just left you sadder in the end.

“That’s great!” said Belle and he was relieved she believed him. She even gave him a hug. He stiffened in her arms, momentarily afraid, but then he found himself hugging her back. 

Then the doors to the change room outside opened and Mummy Chris called out to them, saying she had the clothes purchased now. Belle darted down out of his arms and back underneath the partition between the stalls and into her own separate stall. 

They emerged a few minutes later in their identical outfits sporting huge grins on their faces. 

“So?” said Chris. “Where do you guys want to go now?” 

Belle caught Rumple’s eye and they both shouted at once: “Ice cream!”


	11. Chapter 11

***Special thanks to belle and others for their prompts and suggestions! Thanks for reading a following and reviewing everyone! You are the best! Much love! Some background info: One of my best memories of being a kid was getting a matching outfit with my best friend and going around together looking exactly the same, shirts shorts, socks, everythingJI still have the picture and the good memories, although I haven't seen or heard from my friend in years. Also, this story happens to take place in Toronto, my hometown, (yes all the places I write about are real or based on real places, including some of the less savoury ones, like the house Rumple grew up in). Svenson's was a real restaurant that used to be at the Eaton's Centre where they did indeed have great milkshakes and ice cream, not to mention my favourite, grilled cheese sandwiches. My grandmother used to take me there when I was little as a treat. It no longer exists, (having since been taken over by mostly chain stores), but I rememberJ*****

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With their old clothes in the shopping bag in the stroller and Rumple's walking boot back on, they made their way to Svenson's Ice Cream and Milk Shakes. Unlike most of the shops which were typical mall chain stores, Svenson's was special. There was only one Svenson's and they had the best ice cream in town.

Chris got a chocolate milk shake for herself and one for Rumple and Belle to split together. The milkshakes were huge and difficult for small kids to eat all by themselves.

"I've never been much fond of shopping, but you two might just change my mind," admitted Chris as she looked across the table.

"A toast!" she proposed. "To my favorite shopping buddies, Rumple and Belle."

The two kids raised their milkshake glasses and had a careful clink with Chris in the middle of the table.

They'd planned to hit the toy store after, but by the time they left Svenson's most of the stores in the mall were already closing down. They went to the bookstore instead, which was a large one and open until 11pm.

Belle knew it well, even though she'd lived in town for such a short time compared to Chris, who'd been there all her life. She knew she'd have to bring Rumple back again on his own. Belle showed him her favourite section in the store and the table with the Legos and puffy chairs big enough for the two of them to sit together side by side.

Surreptitiously, Chris snapped a picture of the two of them on her phone sitting together in their matching outfits pouring over a big picture on a bright green poufy chair.

"Aw," cooed a woman, pushing a double pram beside her. "They're so sweet. You're really lucky they get on so well together and are so well behaved. I hope mine stay friends like that when they're older," she said, indicating her own twins in their pram. "You've obviously taught them well."

"Uh, thank you," murmured Chris, surprised, not having the heart to admit to the lady that they weren't twins or even siblings.

She looked down at her phone at the picture she'd just snapped and saw a message had just come in from Kate. Funny, she must have turned the sound off.

"Are you bringing the kids home soon?" read the text.

"Why? Is Maurice there?" she typed back. "Is his wife alright?"

"Yes, it's not that," came the text from Kate. "Something with Rum. Please we need to talk about it in private."

Chris glanced over at Rumple who was still reading with Belle, oblivious to anything else going on.

Shit.

He seemed so carefree right now. What could possibly be wrong?

"C'mon guys, time to go!" Chris said to the two little readers.

"Can we get this?" asked Rumple holding up the book they'd been looking at.

"Sure honey," Chris said, barely glancing at the cover. Her anxiety was mounting. She just wanted to find out what was wrong. Why did Kate have to be so secretive all of a sudden? What couldn't she say over the phone?

Unaware anything was amiss, Belle and Rumple purchased their books, Chris lifting each of them up so they could put the books on the counter themselves.

It was a long way from the bookstore back to the place where they'd parked. Towards the end, Chris could tell Rumple was seriously flagging.

"Stroller?" she asked him point blank and he just nodded tiredly and got in.

The drive home was a lot quieter than the drive there. It was dark by the time they arrived at the house and when Chris looked in the back seat she saw Rumple and Belle were asleep. Belle's head leaned on Rumple's narrow shoulder and Rumple's head rested on top of hers, looking completely peaceful.

She woke them with regret as they pulled into the driveway.

"Maurice is on his way," she told Belle as she got Belle and Rumple settled on the couch, watching cartoons. "I'll be in the study with Kate if you guys need anything."

Once she was certain the kids were fully absorbed in their video, Chris went into the study softly closing the door behind her to talk to Kate.

"You've got me going crazy with worry. What's all this cloak and dagger business? Now what's this all about?"

Chris studied Kate's cheeks. They were flushed like she'd been crying.


	12. Chapter 12

Kate sighed and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

"Kate what's happened?"

"I got a call from his social worker when you guys were out…"

"Oh my God—they want to take him away! They can't! They—"

"Ssssh…"

Kate put her hand on Chris's arm before the other woman's voice could raise any higher.

Chris's eyes filled as she remember him saying "I love you" to her that day in his room.

"It's about his dad. He's dead."

"What?" Whatever she was expecting Chris wasn't expecting this.

"They just called up and told me. This body they found in Ann Arbor, Michigan of all places in an abandoned house. They've had it in the morgue down there for months, but no one could identify it. They found him in a house where injection drug use was going on. He had a wallet, but there were all these different people's cards in it with different names. It took them a while to sort out his identity and the fact that he wasn't registered anywhere in the States, as well."

"And they're sure its him?"

"He was a little decomposed," said Kate wrinkling her nose. "They waited for the DNA and prints and dental stuff to come back. They're pretty much absolutely sure now though."

"And they're sure this Malcolm Gold guy was his dad?"

"In his wallet there were two pictures. One of a woman—"

"This Astrid Rumple keeps on talking about maybe?"

"I doubt it. It said 'Jenny' on the back. And there was one of a toddler, with brown hair and brown eyes. It said 'Rupert' on the back."

"His real name."

"Yeah."

"Look." Kate held up her phone and opened the image from an e-mail; a tiny, wallet sized picture, creased in the middle, of a smiling toddler in a knitted sweater with a boat on it, standing up, holding a wooden block out to whoever was holding the camera. His small tuft of brown hair looked brushed and clean. In this photo, at around three years old he was round-cheeked and chubby, sturdy on his feet. Nothing at all like the solemn, narrow faced boy, crawling slowly around the play area, he'd been the first time they met him at the Children's Aid, and yet this was him, Chris was sure of it.

My God. To compare the sad little creature he was when they found him to this, really made her realize how much he truly must've suffered and what he'd lost in the time in between, to bring him to such a state.

"How long's it been since he last saw his father?" asked Chris.

"I dunno. I think he wasn't very nice to Rumple though, seeing as how he refuses to even respond to the name his father called him. I mean he doesn't even ever talk about him, like talking about him's going to bring him back like the boogeyman, he's that scared of him. Aside from the neglect, who knows what the hell else went on in that house he grew up in or how he really hurt his leg. For all we know his father could've broken it for him and the whole falling down the stairs thing is something he made up. Maybe he won't even be sad his dad is gone. Maybe he'll feel relieved. "

Chris sighed. Somehow, even if this Malcolm Gold was the worst father in the world, she knew it would upset Rumple on some level and he was just starting to get well adjusted. How would they ever tell him? Did they even have to tell him?

"I know what you're thinking," said Kate, meeting her partner's eye. "But he has to know, it's not right to keep it from him, at least so he won't worry his dad is out there somewhere trying to take him back or something. Look, we can deal with this. They're not taking him away. He's here with us and we're a family. We can support him through this. He's our kid and whatever he feels about this we'll be there with him through it, right?"

"Right."

"Okay."

After Belle left Rumple went upstairs to get changed and brush his teeth. Then he climbed up onto his bed and looked at his new book as he waited for his mummies to come in to read to him and tuck him in like they did every night. The past few nights they'd also begun doing do new stretching exercise with his foot teaching it to bend properly again.

"Hey buddy," said Kate as she entered the room, trying to hid her nervousness. She'd been the one to convince Chris to tell him, but now that they were actually there and ready to speak to him, she felt nervous.

Rumple held up the new book. "Can we read it now?" he pleaded.

"Not just yet honey," said Chris, following Kate inside. "We uh, we need to talk to you for a second."

"Talk about what? Are we going to the mall again tomorrow?" he smiled expectantly.

"Um, it's about your Dad—"

"Oh," he whispered, the look on his face immediately changing. He stared down at the comforter.

"Some people have found him."

Rumple looked up at Kate and Chris, suddenly rigid with fright.

"No! No please, don't give me back! I'll be extra good! You don't understand. He's mean. He let me get hurt and teased me after and—and—and—" He was gulping for air and suddenly couldn't even think straight. He grabbed onto Kate who was the nearest of the women to him and clutched her around the waist like he was drowning. "Please! He's a bad guy. He doesn't mean to be but he is! Please, I want to stay here with you! You're good mums! You are! You're—"

Kate stared down at him in shock as he held her with more strength than she knew he had in his skinny little body. In a daze she put her hand on his head and stroked his hair.

"Shush, sweetie, no one is taking you away. You're here with us for good, it's okay."

"But my Dad—"

She held his face in her hands to make sure he was listening to her as Chris sat down on the bed and put her arms around him.

"He passed away sweetie. That's what we had to tell you. They found your dad and—and he'd passed away."

"Past?"

"We wouldn't let anyone ever lay a finger on you and take you, Rum. We'd fight till our last breath against it," said Chris as she squeezed him tight.

But Rumple was still confused. "Passed away? Away where? Far far away where he won't come back and get me?" he asked hopefully.

"Uh, you could say that," said Chris scratching the back of her head.

"He died, honey," said Kate.

"When?"

"They found him like that a few months ago only they didn't know who he was for a while. Ms. Barton called tonight while you were with Belle at the mall to tell us."

"And he's really dead? For real really?"

"Yes."

"Oh. That's weird."

"Uh, yeah, it is."

"Was he sick?"

"We don't know."

"Didn't he have enough medicine to make him better?"

"Uh, we don't know. No one knows really what happened."

"Oh." Rumple paused and suddenly he thought of someone else. "Wait, did Ms. Barton say anything—anything about Astrid? Was she there? Was she with him?"

"What?" Neither Chris nor Kate had expected this line of questioning.

"Astrid, you know!" exclaimed Rumple in frustration. "She's a woman! She's a fairy! She's tall and has pink hair! Is she past too? Did she…die?" His face grew pale at the thought.

"Uh, sweetie there was no one else, no one else there when they found him."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Because Astrid can disappear, you know," he continued, speaking hurriedly. "She can vanish when people try to look for her, especially people she doesn't like or the police. She told me so. It's her power! Really!" said Rumple desperately as he saw Kate and Chris exchange a glance when they thought he couldn't see, it. But he saw and he knew what they were thinking. She's not real.

Even though he thought maybe they loved him, he knew they still thought he'd imagined the whole thing. But he knew—he knew—it had to be true. He couldn't have imagined a whole person, not someone as vivid as Astrid. Malcolm, maybe, he'd wondered sometimes, if he'd just conjured him up like a bedtime monster, but not Astrid, never Astrid. Now that they were saying Malcolm really had been real, then that meant for sure Astrid was too, he reasoned. What if she was in danger the way his Dad had been? Could he save her somehow? Where would he start? How would he find her?


	13. Chapter 13

It was true Chris didn't believe Rumple when he began raving about Astrid again. She figured they should've expected it, but all her imagine had told her would be likely were tears or anger, relief or indifference. She hadn't for a moment thought of the whole Astrid thing and now she regreted not being prepared. I mean, how did one comfort a child who believed his imaginary fairy friend was in grave danger? Another thing parenting books never taught you.

"I suppose we shouldn't be surprised," said Chris somberly, later in bed when she and Kate were done comforting Rumple as best they could. Dr. Blau had told them that "Astrid" was a made-up companion and might surface whenever Rumple grew unduly distressed and felt he need the extra comfort to cope with anything overwhelming in his life. Sometimes, she said, severely neglected children whose caregivers didn't look after them would invent an imaginary adult who loved and looked after them to help them survive the deprivation and loneliness. Once Rumple was acclimatized to his new surroundings and got over his fear that his new parents would abandon him, Astrid's purpose would be redundant and she'd recede into the background. Or at least that was the theory.

She supposed it made sense that in a time of trauma and instability like finding out about Malcolm's death he'd reach out instinctively to his old source of comfort. It's just that… something about it—his extreme fear that something would happen to Astrid—it just struck her as kind of odd. Why would he be so worried about the physical well being of someone who had no physical form?

"I don't buy it," said Kate stubbornly, rising up on one elbow to face Chris.

"What exactly? That his father really died? That he OD'd on drugs? The police did a full work-up and everything," Chris actually knew what Kate was on about, but she didn't want to get into, not this late at night with her having to start work early in the morning.

But Kate would be heard.

"No, that's not it and you know it," insisted Kate. "This thing with this Astrid person! Look, I know what Dr. Blau says and I know she's this learned therapist with degrees and all that, but I think she's wrong. I think Astrid is or was perhaps a real person. At least somewhat."

"Oh come on, you don't seriously believe a magical fairy with pink hair used take care of him when his dad went on a bender."

"I don't now, Chris. Did you see his reaction? If she wasn't real why would he be so worried about her being dead?"

"I don't know! It makes about as much sense as anything else about it."

"He's so specific about her, too. You know he once told me she liked David Bowie," Kate mentioned as if this was highly significant.

"So? David Bowie is awesome. He has crossover appeal. Even imaginary friends like David Bowie."

"Chris, please. I mean how would a little kid know all the words to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars unless someone taught him?"

"Maybe his Dad—" began Chris.

"Yeah," snorted Kate, "the guy who let this poor, sweet kid crawl around on a broken, growth-arrested leg for two years, while he ran off to get high, really took the time to—"

"Look, I know you're about to go on some kind of internet quest to find this person because you think it'll help Rum reconcile all the shit that's happened in his life, but did you ever consider that even if this woman was real, she couldn't have been very good at looking after him either? He was left at the hospital with pneumonia and malnutrition in case you don't remember," said Chris.

"People get into tight spots sometimes…" said Kate, who'd been in quite a few herself before she'd known Chris.

"Uh-huh," retorted Chris sarcastically. "You know there is a social safety net, welfare programs, all that. We live in the 21st century, not Dickensian London. I see lots of parents on social assistance at my work. Their kids don't starve. The city is full of poor kids and they all go to school and to doctor's visits like everyone else. There are food banks, programs for families on assistance, there are support programs to help people who are struggling. I'm not saying it's great or everything is accessible as it should be, but there's no reason for a parent to let their kid get into that kind of condition, not like he was when he showed up at the hospital."

"You're right, I know. I just wish this hadn't happened. As if things weren't difficult enough. I mean what if there's a funeral for this Malcolm guy and all that? Why can't all this strife just stay in his past and leave our family alone? Why can't anything ever stay good without shit coming along and ruining things just when they seem to be getting on the right track?" sniffed Kate.

"Oh Katy, let's not be melodramatic about this," sighed Chris. "Look, we're still on the right track. Everything's going to be alright. For us and for Rumple. You'll see."

But in bed, alone that night, Rumple didn't feel alright


	14. Goodnight Belle

Before Belle went to bed every night, after she got a story from her dad, her mother tucked her in. She did this by Skype and never forgot a date, no matter how she was feeling.

Her father brought the computer into Belle's room and put it beside her on the pillow. She kissed the screen and her mum kissed the screen. Then she'd ask Belle about her day and what she'd been up to.

Tonight her talk was all about her adventure to the mall with Rumple and Kate. Belle loved to talk to her mum and would try to stretch the time out as long as she could.

Unfortunately, there was only so much she could relate to her mum about what had actually happened during her day without repeating herself. It was a good thing, therefore that Belle had an excellent imagination.

Since her mum had started staying overnight at the hospital Belle had perfected the art of spinning out a simple story into something very long and complicated through creative additions. Sometimes these stories took on lives of their own and diverged rather far from anything an adult might consider plausible, but Belle's mum never contradicted her or scoffed that what she said couldn't be true. Maybe it was just because she liked hearing Belle's voice no matter what she was saying or maybe it was because she knew how important Belle's abundant fictional life was to the child's well being. It helped her cope with all the changes she'd had to deal with. It gave her escape and it gave her hope.

And hope was something Rose was desperately trying to cling onto. It would be so easy to give up, but hearing Belle's piping voice and seeing her in her ruffled little nightie tucked snuggly into bed every night, kept Rose going far longer than her doctors had dared to hope for.

Up until Rose's illness and the family's move to be an apartment closer to the hospital in the city centre, Belle had led a privileged, sheltered, suburban life, but she had always been curious about people in other places and situations. And she devoured books on any topic, of course, but that didn't mean she neglected to meet as many people as she could in real life. They made excellent characters, after all.

The character feature the most in Belle's stories, (aside from herself, of course, for like most children, she was naturally self-obsessed), was Belle's best friend, Rumple.

The boy seemed like an endless fount of stories for Belle. Rose sensed that Rumple was different from the other children in Belle's class in many ways and this fascinated Belle. Somehow the small girl clearly detected that there was something deeper about him than was apparent at first glance.

Rose rather suspected that part of the attraction was probably due to the fact that Rumple seemed to have lived quite an eventful life for a small child. Belle had a sixth sense for sniffing out a person who had stories, and Rumple, whether he realized it or not was just brimming with them and their inherent drama.

The "facts" Rose had garnered about Rumple according to Belle were these:

1\. Rumple had come from another land, but it was a harsh place and people were mean to him there, so he'd escaped through a portal and wound up in Chris and Kate's house which is why the two women had adopted him. Also, he was three hundred years old, give or take a few years. He only looked and acted young because he'd been in Neverland for a while.

2\. In the land on the other side of the portal that Rumple came from lived all sorts of strange and magical creatures. For example: dragons. Some of the dragons were small and nice and you could ride on them if you trained them. Other dragons were huge and scary and tried to eat people. Rumple was learning to be a dragon trainer and flying on his dragon with the other kids, when an enormous bad dragon flew out of a secret cave and tried to catch him and eat him. Rumple's dragon helped him escape, but when the bad dragon blew magical fire at them, some of it went on his leg and made it shrink. (Rose suspected that this particular story was heavily influenced by the "How to Train Your Dragon" movie she'd seen with Belle off Netflix the previous weekend, but she let that go).

3\. Rumple was a close personal friend of the Neverland fairies. He'd been brought up by a pink haired fairy named Astrid in Pixie Hollow who could make clothes and food appear for him by magic without paying for things in a store. He got pixie dust from the fairies so he could fly around Neverland wherever he wanted to, and no one noticed that he couldn't really walk properly because everybody just flew everywhere so it didn't matter. But then a strange sickness appeared in Neverland that only seemed to affect magical creatures and they sent Rumple off to other lands through portals and stuff to find a cure.

4\. Rumple was not Belle's boyfriend. Boyfriend and girlfriend stuff was ICK! They were friends. Boys and girls could be friends together without all that weird stuff like kissing that made grown-up movies boring and silly.

"Oh I see," said Rose with a smile, as Belle related this last fact to her mother. "And is it silly when your dad and I kiss too?"

Belle rolled her eyes. Why were adults so obtuse? "No of course not Mum! You're a mum and dad. How else are you supposed to have babies? You needed to kiss to make me!"

Maurice and Rose burst out laughing.

"What?" asked Belle perturbed.

Rose was still laughing a little as she kissed the screen and "tucked" Belle into bed.

She would have to get better now, Rose thought with amusement, if only to spare Maurice the task of explaining the facts of life to their daughter. The last thing she'd seen before she'd shut off the Skype was Maurice's face gone beet red with embarrassment.


	15. A Comment on Belle's stories

A Comment on Belle's Stories:

I don't usually take time in these things for comments. I'm kind of more comfortable letting my stories speak for themselves and not going on about other things.

But I did want to say something here that is important to me, because Belle's stories reminded me of it.

Stories make a difference in people's lives. They really do. In the world outside people put all sorts of definitions on you, stick you into a box labeled this or a box labeled that. But inside ourselves we can be whoever we want.

But that doesn't mean we are.

Theoretically, we should be free to give wing to any imaginary version of ourselves the mind could come up with, , but our imagination itself is hemmed in, influenced by the reality we grow up in and the narratives that surround us, fictions and facts that we've absorbed all our lives, that become ingrained in the very fibre of what we are capable of imagining and shape the directions our minds travel in. Sometimes these stories we absorb about who we are and who we should be are empowering. Sometimes they are not.

When the stories that surround you make you define yourself in a sad and narrow way, it is time to get some new stories.

The problem is, if there are none around you that suit your purpose, you might have to make up a few yourself and that's not easy.

Sometimes it takes a close friend to give you the gift of a story that empowers you, one that helps you imagine yourself as something you never could before, that makes you see yourself as someone cool that you like being, that highlights qualities you have that you never thought of as good or important.

Once a friend told me a story about myself that me see myself in a different light, a better light when I was feeling down.

Other times I think I've done it for other people.

When I was a young teenager there was a kid I worked with who had a bone disorder and had to have lots of operations on his legs. When we were around other kids they would always ask him questions about whether he was "that wheelchair kid" and he used to get tired and frustrated answering them and then be crabby for a long time afterwards. So finally one day when someone asked him, and I thought he was going to get upset, I don't know where it came from, but I suddenly told the other kid that he was a space explorer from another planet and that on his planet the gravity was different and everybody floated around all day and the things on his legs were there to get him adjusted to Earth's gravity after having lived his entire life in a zero G environment. I actually got the idea from a Star Trek:TNG episode. Anyway, this kid liked space stuff so he thought this was neat. And suddenly, instead of frowning he was smiling and feeling cool. I'm not sure if the kid I told the story to really believed it, but it was more fun than explaining about him having a disease, which was a drag to talk about all the time.

It's weird to me in a way that of all the things I remember, that memory is so strong. I think it is because that day I felt like I had made this huge discovery about myself. I never thought of storytelling as this enormous power I could have to change people's lives in a good way and to actually see that change as it happened on someone's face.

I felt like Spiderman discovering he could stick to walls or something. I was giddy.

The thing is, I think the whole space explorer from a zero G planet exploring Earth was more who he was inside and who he wanted to be than the "kid with a bone disease" explanation, even if other people would say that was the true one.

Make of that what you will.

Art is the lie that tells the truth. I believe that.

Through making up fictions we may arrive at what is true and often beautiful about each other and our own experience.


	16. Unpleasant Dreams

Rumple lay in bed unable to sleep. He wished Kate and Chris were there with him. Or Astrid. Or Belle. Even Maurice would have been welcome and he barely knew the man. Instead he just had his battered toy Spider-man, the one thing he had left from his days in the big broken down house with Astrid and his dad. He was glad he still had Spider-man. After all, Rumple thought, he had fallen through a bannister and down an entire floor of a house to save him, it would be awful to lose him after all that sacrifice. That's why he never brought Spider-man anywhere, but kept him safe in a drawer right by his bed with his flashlight so when he really needed him, late at night when he had bad dreams, Spider-man would be there.

Lately, he'd been having fewer bad dreams, but he knew tonight they might come again. Everything looked scary tonight. All around the room he saw shadowy forms lumping together. He wondered if Malcolm was a ghost now. Would he be angry at Rumple for going off with Chris and Kate, for forgetting his real dad? He thought Malcolm would be. It was like him. Maybe the shapes were his dad now turned into some kind of ghost zombie thing. Or maybe they were the scary guys from the park with the big coats, come into his room trying to sell him that bad medicine, to force it on him even if he said "no."

He remembered now, the time he'd seen one of the scary men in the big coats at the park, take a shiny metal object out of his pocket and flick it open. Rumple realized it was a knife and not the kind you used on bread. Then he turned towards Rumple in his stroller with a gold toothed grin. He knew Astrid and Rumple, the spoiled little runt. He was bored and wanted to give the boy a scare, to have some fun. He'd seen Astrid with Rumple at the park, picking the boy up to put him in the sand pit to play. Rumple crawling around on the grass searching for Astrid until the kid realized she was behind the shed taking her "special medicine." And how they all laughed to see this little bit of kid crawl up to her and promptly begin lecturing her against shooting up. Someone ought to show the kid his place.

"What's wrong? You scared of a little knife?" smirked the man, noting Rumple's round eyed stare.

Rumple gulped and said nothing.

"Well, if you're scared then best you run away. Otherwise I'll come at you. I'll cut ya, yeah!"

Terrified Rumple, unbuckled the stroller belt with fumbling fingers and got to his feet. He could limp along for a bit, putting a just bit of weight on his bad leg and trying to ignore the pain, and could hop well enough if he had something to hold onto, but he couldn't run, even then when he was desperate to get away and thought his life was in danger. Still, he tried and promptly fell down on the rocky sand. He started to cry as he could just imagine the scary man coming over him now with the bad knife to hurt him.

But before the scary man could get to Rumple, Astrid got to the scary man. She got up in his face, yelling with her hands on her hips. "What the hell's wrong wit you, eh? You a fucking hard man, yeah? Waita impress people, picking on a disabled six year old. Yeah, real fucking impressive, that." She pushed him in the chest with her finger, like she wasn't frightened of the knife at all. "Asshole."

"Ease up honey, I was just playing with him," he laughed. "It was just a joke. Ain't that right kid?"

Rumple just blinked, trying to get sand out of his eyes.

"I ain't your honey. Why don't you get lost?"

"But don't you want any—"

"What, you need to clean out your ears or something? I said fuck off. Leave me and my kid alone."

Rumple was still face down in the sand, feeling hurt and humiliated, but still Astrid's words reached him, caressing him like a soothing balm. My kid.

Her kid. She'd stood up for him and protected him. She'd said "my kid" for everyone to hear it, not just for the two of them alone! His own father barely acknowledged their relationship or took him out in public anymore, but Astrid loved him, really loved him, and for this reason and so many others, she was his hero.

"Come on Sweetie," she said picking him up. "Those bad guys are gone. They won't hurt you anymore."

She sat down on a park bench and put him in her lap.

"Does it hurt?" she asked him, examining his knees, where he'd ripped his pants.

He nodded.

"There there sweetie, it's alright, you'll be alright," she said and her warm hands rubbed his stiff ankle and calf, massaging it, working all the stiffness right out, making it feel relaxed and warm and nearly normal again. He sighed with relief and nuzzled his face into her jacket, savouring her arms around him, making him feel loved and safe and no longer alone.

Only then Malcolm had come along and started shouting at them, angry at Astrid for not buying the medicine and at Rumple for being clumsy again and preventing Astrid from buying what they needed. Even when Astrid tried to explain about the man with the knife, his father was still mad at Rumple or "Rupert" as he called him.

Some insane moment of bravery had made Rumple blurt out then that his name wasn't "Rupert," but "Rumple" because that's what Astrid called him. That made Malcolm even angrier going on about how Rumple was a silly name and he was christened Rupert and where the hell did this Rumple stuff come from anyhow and that Rupert was a disloyal, useless little thing, who liked Astrid better than his own father.

Well duh, thought Rumple from the safety of his stroller where his dad couldn't hit him, but wisely said nothing.

Now Malcolm dying seemed like a bad dream, even if it was real. His father had always seemed so huge, with his giant strides that Rumple could never hope to keep up with, even back when he was little and could walk properly. Then there was that booming voice that was always startling him and scaring him. Malcolm could make money out of nothing and trick people with his clever words, words that could build you up or cut you down to the quick.

If Malcolm, who was big and strong was dead now, thought Rumple, uneasily, what hope was there for him, who was so small and weak? How was he going to stay alive? Mummy Chris and Mummy Kate would protect him he knew, they'd said so, but what about Astrid? The last time he'd seen her, she'd been so very sick. He remembered that now. He remembered them looking at the stars together and then he'd woken up in a strange white room, feeling sick and frightened, but warm, at least he'd been warm.

That night Rumple dreamed. He dreamed of his dad Malcolm and he remembered things. Old things. Long ago memories of their time together. He remembered his dad having friends, normal friends he used to play soccer with in the park who called him Talchy Malchy. He remembered it being a different park than the one he used to go to with Astrid and sitting on someone (his Mum's?) lap and watching his dad play. They had a special climbing frame there he recalled, shaped like a spaceship and the houses around were big and spacious with large front yards. He remembered crawling along the top of the monkey bars, nimble as a monkey with his father below him, feeling safe and secure, knowing his dad would always catch him if he fell. How could it be the same dad who'd never even noticed when he fell down all those stairs? How could it be the same person who made fun of him, who called him hopeless, useless?

There had been times, times when he thought his dad might've really loved him before the weird medicine and living in the house with all those strange people. Back then Malcolm had a proper job and Rumple's mother was sick and they went to see her in the hospital like Maurice took Belle to see her mother. His dad still had hope then, still believed things were worth taking care of, to keep them in order for when his mum returned. He still thought things would be better someday and she would get well. He took good care of their son Rupert, believing the two of them just had to hang on a little longer until his mum would get better and come back to take care of her little boy. She was supposed to get better. The doctors said. But the doctors were wrong. Somehow she died and Malcolm just gave up. He stopped caring about anything then, anything other than stopping the pain inside with his next fix.

Rumple couldn't really remember his mother, even in his dreams. She was just a shadowy figure, usually. Only tonight in his dream she had a face and it was the face of Astrid. With Astrid's pink hair, but long instead of spikey, like his mother's hair in the picture his father used to show him, from the day they got married.

In the dream Astrid was in the hospital the way his Mum had been the last time he remembered her, looking weird, with tubes coming out of her. Dying.

And then some strange doctors and nurses took her away. They took her on a long rolling bed like they'd put him in when he had his surgery. And he tried to follow the doctors and nurses where they were taking her, but they were wheeling the bed away so fast and he was trying to run to keep up, but his bad leg was caught on something. Something was on it, tangled up with it, pulling at it.

He turned around to see what it was and he saw the nurses were throwing long rolls of bandages at him, like weird cowboy lassos, catching him by the legs and winding around him and pulling him back. He reached out towards Astrid, but the rolling bed kept receding and receding. As he felt the bandages wrap fast around his legs, it disappeared through a pair of swinging doors and he knew they were taking her to a bad place and that they were going to somehow kill her. He was powerless to stop it, entangled in bandages, but still he screamed.

At the top of his lungs he screamed out "STOP!"

And woke himself up. He was disoriented upon waking, crying and thrashing, the sheets gone down towards the end of the bed, wrapped and tangled around his legs.

He tried to kick them off his bad leg, but couldn't. It was so weak it couldn't even kick the tangled sheet away. Sitting up with shakinghands, he removed the sheets manually so he was free again. With the sheets on the floor he felt suddenly cold. He'd been sweating so much in his dream that his pajamas were soaked, wet and clammy with fear sweat, stuck in wrinkled up rolls against his body.

He was very very afraid. Something in him told him he had to get away, far away. He had to run. He slipped down off the bed and holding his Batman flashlight tight to his body limped off down the hall as fast as he could go. The light from the flashlight bounced around. Without a cast or boot or anything on his foot he felt uneven and unbalanced. The hallway was dark and scary and the wooden floor creaked under his feet like ghosts talking and spooky haunted houses. He hated the sound and tried to go faster. He knew the door to Chris and Kate's room was at the end of the hall. If he could just make it there he'd be safe from the ghosts and the memories and nightmares and monsters and all the other scary things.

Faster, faster, faster.

His hand was on the brass knob now glinting in the flashlight's beam. He twisted it and pushed. There was a small ridge of wood separating the hallway floor from the floor in Kate and Chris's room. Their floor was about a centimeter lower than the level of the wood floor in the hall, which had been redone a few years previously. Rumple, in the dark, going at top speed, still not quite used to balancing without his walking boot, tripped and fell hard, barking his shins against the floor.

Chris and Kate heard a crash and a yell. They found Rumple sobbing on the floor, his face in the carpet.

Kate and Chris had the lights on and quickly helped Rumple up into the bed with them. They rubbed his back and dried his tears and tried to make sense of the jumbled story he was telling them about Astrid in the hospital and the nurses trying to catch him with bandages. He'd cut his knees a bit and there was a little bit of blood that they washed off before putting on some spider-man bandaids for him. His leg hurt, but he felt too confused and afraid to really say much other than to babble about his scary dream about the hospital people trying to take Astrid away leaving him all alone.

"Ssh… you don't have to be on you own," said Chris.

"Especially tonight," said Kate.

Chris went to Rumple's room and got his pillow. Then they nestled him safely between them in the bed.

When he thought both his mums were sleeping, he reached out his hands on either side of his body to touch them and remind himself that they were there. On one side he could touch Mummy Chris's narrow back and the bristly part at the nape of her neck where she had her hair trimmed short below the long part. On the other side he could feel the big loopy curls of Kate spilling untidily over her pillow and see the pale skin of her doughy arm, as it lay like a pillow beneath her head. She snored softly like the sound of rising and falling waves upon the shore. Rumple's leg still hurt but he was very very tired from such a fitful sleep, not to mention the long walk in the mall beforehand that now seemed years away. Listening to the hypnotic sound of Kate's breathing he relaxed and slept soundly at last.


	17. Astrid?

Morning came, Chris's alarm went off and she got dressed to go off to her job as a social worker at the agency downtown.

Kate worked from home as a freelance comic book artist, illustrator and graphic designer, among other arty things. Now she sat propped up in bed with a book, watching Rumple sleeping, his little face so calm and cute, unruffled by worries of any kind. Kate was glad he was having peaceful dreams under her watchful gaze. She liked herself feeling like this, like a tough lioness protecting her little cub from the dangers of the world. Chris would have her head, but she'd decided to let Rum sleep in this morning and miss first bell at school. She figured he'd had a rough night of it and could use a little TLC, maybe an extra hour or more of shut eye and a long lingering, breakfast. Pancakes or waffles, maybe with eggs, she mused. Something really nice instead of the usual hurried muffin, toasted bagel or yogurt in a tube with cereal. They usually ate on the road, so she could get him to school on time. As an artist, Kate worked best late at night. Getting up early enough to get Rumple to school, (why in the world did elementary schools start at such a godforsaken hour?) had required a major adjustment on her part. She wished she was a morning person like Chris, but it just wasn't in the cards.

She watched as Rumple turned lazily, waking up from his sleep and opened his large brown eyes.

"Hey little man," she said softly.

"Mummy…" he looked around confusedly at first, wondering why he'd woken up in a strange bed. No, not strange, this was his mummies' bed. Why in their bed? Then the knowledge of everything that had happened the night before slammed into him again like a mac truck. He still had trouble believing Malcolm was really dead. It seemed too much like a bizarre dream. Maybe someone had just made it up. After all, he hadn't seen anything to confirm it.

"You okay sweetie?" asked Kate, her gaze softening with concern.

"Need to go," Rumple grumbled sleepily.

"Oh yeah, of course." Kate gave him hand to help him down off the high bed so he could go to the bathroom.

He stepped down on the floor and tears instantly sprang to his eyes. "Ouch!"

"What's wrong?" asked Kate, instantly recalling the horrible thud that had awoken her the night before, breath in her throat upon seeing her little boy lying there on the floor, thinking the worst.

They'd check him out before putting him back to bed with them, and he seemed all right, thank God, but the light in the room wasn't the greatest. They'd all been rather groggy, it being the middle of the night. She didn't think Rumple seemed very hurt or in much pain then, more startled and frightened then anything else. Of course, living as he had before, she should have known his first instinct would always be to hide any pain or injury, to protect himself from being vulnerable. She cursed herself, for not thinking of it before.

Kate lifted up the leg of his pajama bottoms and notice his weak leg looked red and puffy around the ankle. Usually it looked much smaller than the other one, but today it seemed hot and swollen.

"Shit," she said out loud.

"What?" his high pitched voice climbed the scales in alarm.

"Your ankle looks a little swollen sweetie, we should probably take you to the clinic for a check up just to be sure it's okay," said Kate, choosing her words carefully, trying not to upset him. She sucked in a breath, pretty sure Rumple was going to have a meltdown at the suggestion. He hated going to the hospital orthopedic unit and would hide under the table whenever they tried to take him.

But all he asked is "Can I wear my new pants?"

"Sure," answered Kate brightly, glad this was all it would take to convince him. "And we'll have a nice pancake breakfast beforehand too."

"Cool! I want the blueberry—ouch!" he took another bad step.

"There now, let me give you a lift," she said to him and he let her pick him up.

Trying to hide her worry Kate carried him into his room and helped let him put on his clothes and then took him downstairs.

They had breakfast and she gave him a children's Tylenol.

Then she bundled Rumple into his stroller to take him, once again to the hospital.

She decided not to make him put on his walking boot because of the swelling. She put it in a bag in case he'd need it for later. He crawled into the stroller and they went out to the bus stop to wait.

She'd made sure to arm him with his new favourite book… "Bartholemew Cubbins and the 500 Hats" to read. She wasn't sure if he could read all the words in it, it was quite difficult for a Dr. Seuss book, but he seemed to enjoy the castle setting, and the characters of knights and kings setting and the fact that the peasant boy got the better of the foolish king in the end.

Waiting at the bus stop with them an elderly woman said, "Wow, I can't believe such a young kid knows how to read a big book like that!"

Rumple smiled proudly and continued reading.

"Can you really read it all on your own young man?" the woman prompted him.

"Absolutely," said Rumple in his high little voice and managed to impress both Kate and the elderly woman, treating them to a near flawless reading of page 15.

"Well done!" she said breathlessly. Kate knew she was partially so impressed because Rumple was small and in a stroller and looked so much younger than he actually was.

Not one to disappoint an audience Rumple continued to read the book on the bus out loud until the very end. Kate thanked her lucky stars for the elderly lady. This was just the distraction Rumple needed. Thanks to having an audience for his reading he'd been well behaved and not particularly nervous the entire way to the hospital.

But as the "kneeling bus" platform went down for them and she pushed the stroller out the door his body suddenly tensed. As Sick Children's Hospital loomed into view, he looked poised to spring.

As they entered the atrium she gave his little hand a squeeze. "Courage my love," she said to him and he nodded mutely.

At the ER area she gave him her cell phone to play with while he waited for her to return from the registration desk. She waited in line for ages, just to see if they could get bumped up in the register so he could be seen sooner because he was already a patient of Dr. West's from the orthopedic clinic in the hospital. When Kate finally got back to the chair she'd left him sitting on, she was shocked. Rumple was gone! Only her cell phone was left lying on the chair where he'd been sitting moments ago

Rumple limped determinedly down the hall. He still remember how to walk on his damaged leg when it hurt like this from before. He could make it as stiff as possible and just touching a bit of his heel to the ground and leaning against the wall so he could reach out and push off from it, he could move quite quickly. It still hurt a lot, but he was not going to let her get away. Not this time.

The automatic doors hissed open to the outside and now he was left with a quandary. He need a wall for support and couldn't go after her. There were some railings. If he could get to those and cling on then he could—but he was moving too slowly, he could see, oh, she would get away, she was going too fast!

Finally, in desperation, not caring if anybody heard, he yelled out to the retreating pink haired woman as she walked down the steps. "Astrid! Stop! Astrid please! It's me! It's Rumple!"


	18. Heartbreak

Some violence triggers in this. Rumple and co. go through some heartbreak. Sorry.

But don't worry. even if this chapter is grim things will start to look up eventually. Promise. Just trust me okay?

XXXXXXXX

The woman turned, as if she recognized her name and his heart leapt up.

And then his heart broke in two when he saw her. This stranger wasn't Astrid at all. She'd just turned her head because she heard someone yelling at her to "Stop!"

This woman didn't have the same eye shape or eye colour. She looked older too and as she walked towards him on impractical high heels that Astrid would never have worn, he could see her hair texture was far too straight and her cheekbones too high.

"Sometimes if you hope and wish for something hard enough, it will come true," he remembered a TV character saying along with some blather about "wishing on a star."

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Tears filled his eyes. They were right. Of course the grown-ups were right. Astrid was just some lame kid's pathetic fantasy. He leaned against the door and cried, loud choking sobs of disappointment.

Alarmed, not-Astrid came over and put her hand on his shoulder. "Oh sweetie, I'm sorry. Did you think I was someone you knew and followed me out?"

He nodded mutely.

"Is your Mum or Dad around?"

At the mention of his dad he cried some more.

Then he heard the squeak of Kate's sneakers on the shiny floor as she ran across the Atrium. "Rumple!" she called out, the sound echoing off the high ceiling, the sculptures and hard brick walls.

Not-Astrid let out a relieved smile, that there was obviously someone looking out for the little boy. "Bet she's glad it isn't her," thought Rumple sourly.

"Where did you go?" scolded Kate. "Why did you leave the ER? Were you trying to go outside?"

Rumple said nothing. He didn't know what Kate would do if he started talking about Astrid again. He'd never seen either Chris or Kate really mad like Malcolm would get, but he didn't want to take that chance.

"Yeah, he was following—I think he thought I was someone he knew," said not-Astrid.

Suddenly, Kate's eyes narrowed as she took in the strange woman's pink hair and remembered his stories about Astrid. "Uh-huh, yes, it's probably the hair," she said.

The woman laughed and twirled a pink strand around her finger. "Oh yeah, I get it."

Her accent was all wrong too, thought Rumple grumpily.

"Come on Rumple," said Kate lifting him up in arms. "Ooof, why did I leave your stroller back in the other room."

Back in the ER waiting room Kate grunted and stretched her back as she put him back down on the chair. "At least no one stole the stroller or my phone," she said. "And speaking of which, I didn't give it to you so you could take off and leave it here. Why in the world did you just up and take off like that?"

Rumple wilted under her gaze, trying to grow as small as he could, like an unnoticeable little ball. The old instincts coming back to him quickly when he needed them. Usually this required him tucking both his legs up under him, especially the vulnerable, damaged one, so nobody would notice it and kick at it for sport, but today he couldn't. It just hurt too much.

Kate put her arm around his shoulders. "Oh sweetie," she sighed. "I'm not really mad at you, don't be frightened. Don't every be frightened of me, please. I'm just—I just want to understand. Please, help me understand. Why did you follow that woman out of the hospital? Don't you know how scared and worried I was when I saw you were gone? I was so very very scared."

He looked up at her confused. He didn't know Kate ever got scared. He was the one who was scared all the time, wasn't he?

"I worried somebody took you or that you were lost and alone and frightened."

Rumple cocked his head at her. She genuinely did seem upset. This was an odd state of affairs. Kate was afraid somebody would snatch him away. His own father had never been too concerned he remembered.

He remembered Malcolm pushing him angrily along one day, talking to him as they went. Malcolm was very energetic that day and Rumple could see in his eyes a sort of manic gleam he'd get when he took a weird kind of medicine he didn't usually take, a medicine that made him full of mischief and the need to do things, whether they needed doing or not.

"My God, how old are you already Rupert? Five? Six?" asked Malcolm, speaking so quickly Rumple could barely understand him.. "And I'm still carting you around like this everywhere. You know what you are? A bloody millstone around my neck. You know it was never my idea to have a kid. It was your mum who tricked me into it and now she's buggered off and died and I'm the one who has to take care of you—always taking care of you. Feeding you, washing you, clothing you and pushing you around because you're too lazy to walk by yourself even though you're old enough to be in school already. And now you've got my girlfriend all convinced you're crippled or something. What a load of crap. But she's insisting I go out and get you some kind of assistive device," he said with sarcastic air quotes. "Bullshit. Now I'm going to give you an assistive device all right and this is the assistance you're going to get- because I think you're faking it and there's not a thing wrong with you other than laziness and spoiledness and Astrid is just off her head as usual. So let's see who's right once and for all. Me or her. And who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will steal you away and we won't have to bother with you anymore," he remarked ominously. Then he turned and began to walk away.

"Dad! Stop!" cried Rumple.

Malcolm paused at this and turned back.

"Please Dad, wait!" Rumple begged.

"Oh, the house is over there by the way," said his father and pointed helpfully down the street.

Rumple began to whimper, but his father looked him sternly in the eye.

Rumple thought, though perhaps he imagined it, that maybe there was a little pity still left in there, maybe some small, lingering spark of love in his father's eyes that he could play upon. He made his own eyes as big as possible, trying to get his father not to leave. Astrid called it "the puppy dog look," and she said Rumple was an accomplished master at it.

Malcolm just sighed. "R-r-rupert, I know it seems cruel right now, but trust me, I'm doing you a favour," he explained, faltering a little, trying to keep his words from not tumbling out too quickly. "How are you ever going to be a grown up and go to school with the big kids if you insist on this nonsense of crawling around like a little baby? Now get out of the stroller and make your own way home walking like a big boy."

Obediently, Rumple unbuckled the stroller belt and step gingerly out onto the ground, holding the handle for support so he didn't have to touch his hurt foot to the ground.

"Good boy," said his father smiling. "Now the other one."

Rumple gritted his teeth and stood on booth feet, although he tilted dangerously to one side, holding onto the stroller handle for dear life.

"There, now was that so hard?" asked his father, smiling from ear to ear, looking like some crazed jack o'lantern and Rumple sort of knew his dad was only seeing what he wanted to see or what the weird medicine allowed him to see and not the truth. Still, he was desperate to please Malcolm, so Rumple stood there feeling fake and foolish, until his father turned away.

"I'll be there at home waiting and we'll have ice cream as a treat!" Malcolm called back cheerily over his shoulder.

As soon as his dad was no longer looking Rumple dropped to his knees and began to crawl home.

When Astrid found him halfway to the house she was fit to be tied.

She washed Rumple's knees up which had gotten scraped on the pavement and put him to bed. He hurt all over and wanted to sleep, but beneath the floor he could hear Astrid and Malcolm having a massive row. He rolled himself into a ball under the covers, hiding completely under all the blankets, legs tucked under him. Part of him wanted to go downstairs to make sure Astrid was okay, but he was too scared and exhausted to try.

Finally Astrid came back up of her own accord. She had a cut above her eyebrow and a split lip.

But Malcolm looked worse.

"You bitch! Look what you did!" swore Malcolm gesturing to the cut down his face and glass pieces all over his shirt, which was now stained bright purple with wine. Apparently, Astrid had broken a wine bottle over his head.

"I don't need you! I don't need either one of you!" yelled Malcolm like a spoiled child.

Angrily, he thrust some random clothes into a knapsack.

"You like him better than me anyway. You're only with me because I can score for you, I know that and don't you deny it!"

"Honestly, what the hell are you talking about Malcolm he's a child! You aren't competing with-"

"Always conspiring against me, ain't you Astrid, you want everything of mine for your own!"

"Okay, getting paranoid a little paranoid here, Mal. Why don't you just go downstairs, have a beer and chill out okay?"

"You don't like the way I raise my son or how I make my money, eh little girl? You think you can do better? Well fine, why don't you give it a shot? See how the fuck you do, miss high and mighty. You'll see! Yeah, you'll see how you get along without me!"

And then Malcolm slammed the door and left.

Astrid quickly discovered Rumple under the covers and favoured him with a wry smile. "Oh don't you worry none, he'll be back…for better or worse." She crinkled up her nose and Rumple could tell from her voice that the prospect wasn't one she greatly anticipated.

But Malcolm didn't come back that night and Rumple felt hopeful. He wished on the streetlight again, praying that Malcolm would either stay away or become somehow nice again when he returned, like the kinder dad he'd been long ago.

It wasn't the first time Malcolm had left of course. There had been many times before and sometimes he was gone as long as a few days or even a week once without word. He would show up again in time, Astrid said, drugged up and hammered, or broke and sober and cranky.

Except this time—this time, Astrid was wrong.


	19. Waiting

What transpired after was the happiest time Rumple had known in his short memory. Just him and Astrid without the fear of Malcolm hanging over them. 

No Malcolm pushing Astrid to take the weird medicine with him when he was using and wanted company. Now that Malcolm was gone Rumple was pleased to see she didn’t feel the need to use it as much. She was with him now most of the time and she was herself, not the drugged out version of her he hated. They got along great and they worked as a team-- nicking things all over the city. 

Astrid’s had plenty of cunning plans. They went to a store and Rumple took whatever she told him to. 

He was lower than the eyeline of most of the clerks in his stroller and could hide things underneath his jacket which he kept in his lap. If anybody caught them, and yes it did occasionally happen, Astrid would act surprised that Rumple had taken things from the store and pretend to scold him and make him return it to the shop owner with apologies. 

She never actually got angry at him if he got caught. Whenever Rumple worried she’d be upset that he’d made a mistake, she would just laugh and say it was the odds of the “nicking stuff game.” Sometimes even the best, most brazen person got caught. Whatever the odds, she was just glad Rumple was on her team. 

Some of the things they nicked they took to the pawnshops. There was one area of Church Street, Astrid explained to Rumple, between Queen and Shuter near the creepy park, where every shop for two blocks solid was either a pawnshop or a “We Buy Your Jewelry” type place. 

At first he’d only liked this part of Church Street because so many of the shops had his last name, “Gold” on their signs. “Lookit Astrid! All the shops here have my name on them! They all belong to me!” he told Astrid who just laughed. Rumple couldn’t actually read, but Astrid had shown him how to write his own name in full, so he knew the word “Gold.” He was excited to see it and recognize it on so many shop windows and awnings all around. 

“No, no sweetheart. They’re saying ‘We buy your Gold,’” she corrected him, “that’s all.”

He shrunk into his stroller in fright. “No, no Astrid please! Don’t let them buy me offa you!”

“Oh, you’re too much!” she giggled. “They don’t want little boys whose name is Gold. They want real gold, like gold bracelets and necklaces and stuff.” 

“Oh.” Once he discovered they weren’t interested in buying him, Rumple found he quite liked the pawnshops. There were so many exciting things in them and unlike the mall where cash or card were the only currency they took, at the pawnshops you could usually make a trade for an item. You could give them something you’d nicked and they would give you money or something else you needed. The only drawback was that sometimes the people who worked in the shops made him feel funny. They looked at Astrid in strange ways, almost as if they wanted to buy her and it made him uncomfortable. 

However even the people running the pawnshops could be done in by Rumple’s patented “puppy dog look.” Lots of the older folks who ran the places had grandkids and Rumple knew how to amp up the cute and use his small size for the desired effect. He’d even begin talking to Astrid in a more babyish way when they were in the shops, so they thought he was way younger and gave Astrid a good deal. 

Food wasn’t a problem during that time. Astrid had a friend working at the CNE. It was like a big gigantic fair downtown by the waterfront near the abandoned Ontario Place which they might or might not be converting into a casino. It took ages to get out there, but once they did they could get all the leftover food at the end of the day that the food stands would otherwise just throw out. They took home bags of tasty treats like funnel cakes and huge boxes of low mein and bacon burgers. Plus, they got to go to the CNE at night and see all the rides lit up full of lights and the people playing games of chance on the midway and the food tents with people giving out free samples of all sorts of exotic delights Rumple had never tried before. There were so many people that it was easy to take things, leftover food that nobody threw out or shopping bags forgotten underneath a seat. Companies gave out samples of hair products and strange flavours of gum and coupons for McDonald’s all day long and if you came more than once they usually didn’t remember. 

One day Astrid even took Rumple to the beach. It wasn’t a real beach, of course, although there was a real one somewhere in the city she said, but there was lots of sand. They bought pails and shovels from the dollar store and went down all the way to the waterfront near the Guvernment club where Astrid said she used to go dancing. Across the street was Sugar Beach. It was a tiny area of artificial sand next to some entertainment company offices and the old Redpath Sugar refinery. There was no water because the beach was created on a platform up above the lake level, but you could still play in the sand. 

Rumple loved to sit and play in the sand. There were a few other kids there too although it was the middle of the day when big kids were in school, so most of them were really young. “Condo kids,” Astrid said dismissively. Rumple didn’t know what a “Condo Kid” was but, he thought they looked very nice, all clean and well dressed, not like the kids at the park near his house who often had rashes around their mouths or smelled like pee. Rumple got Astrid to bury his legs in the sand and they made a castle together.

Rumple played and pretended to be like everyone else. Astrid called this sort of thing “acting” and said people could do it for a profession when they got older. She told Rumple that he was great at acting and he felt proud because it was true. He could act all babyish for pawnshop owners or like a silly little kid who took items from store shelves without thinking or like an invisible ball that no one would notice under the covers when Malcolm was in one of his angry moods or one of the other people in the house came up in their room to make trouble. He could put the sand over him and act like he had two normal working legs underneath like the other kids at the beach. But the best acting he did, was when he pretended that Astrid was his mom or his really big sister. He did it all the time and so did she. 

And not just for strangers who asked either. Sometimes they’d just tell people that, even when they didn’t ask, because it was fun and they felt that way. It wasn’t really acting, Rumple thought, not if you really felt that way inside. And inside he loved Astrid like she was his family, and he thought she loved him in the same way. 

Sitting in the sand as the sun was going down, a half finished castle by his side Rumple stared out at the lake. It was catching the last rays of the sun and glowed full of yellow and pink ripples. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It sparkled bright blue underneath the ripples. More than anything he longed to jump out off the platform into the water and go swimming like Astrid had once told him he could do one day. 

“Maybe at the community pool,” she said when he suggested it. “Not here Rumple, this water is bad. It’s gross and polluted, maybe a long time ago it used to be clean and all right, but it’s not anymore.”

“But it looks so very beautiful, so blue,” he protested.

But Astrid just shook her head. “Things aren’t always what they look like, Rum,” she just said. 

“The lake is just acting, then,” he said and she nodded.

The thought made him feel sad for the pretty lake. Something that had started off so clean and pure, made dirty and hurt and corrupted by people too careless to realize, only lovely from a distance now. 

But things in the world were usually like that, he thought now, sitting with Kate in the waiting room. He’d gotten lulled into a false sense of security recently with everyone being so nice to him. It was never anything but fake. Shouldn’t he know better by now? That whatever good thing you thought might happen—whatever treasure you were promised was just within your grasp, it would always get snatched away in the end, even if everyone promised it wouldn’t. 

Grown-ups, even Astrid in the end, all grown-ups were liars at the core. Other children were sadists who’d use any weakness you had to dominate you. He’d been at a children’s home, for a short time and he’d seen how it could happen. Bigger, stronger kids taking what should by rights have been yours. Other kids could have lives like people on TV but not him, never him, he thought sadly. 

 

“What’s going to happen?” he asked Mummy Kate, frightened. “What are they going to do to me? Are they gonna be mad?”

“Mad?”

“Because I ruined the surgery they did?” he asked anxiously. He was starting to panic a bit at this idea. 

“Are they going to have to do it all over again?” his fingers gripped her arm in terror hard enough to leave marks. “Please please tell them I don’t want it. I’m all right. Please.”

Kate kissed the top of his head worriedly. She wasn’t really that concerned about his leg. Actually what thought the most disabling thing in his life wasn’t anything to do with his walking at all, but the constant fear he seemed to grapple with over so many things, the feeling that any moment someone sweep the rug right out from under him, or that people would suddenly turn and try to hurt him or abandon him. He needed so much reassurance for everything that occasionally she felt impatient with him. There were just so many things that seemed to terrify him, the hospital being somewhere near the top of the list, unfortunately. 

“Hush sweetie, it won’t be like that,” she said, trying to calm him. “It’s probably just a bit of a sprain, that’s all.”

“What’s a sprain? What’ll they do to me?” he whispered.

“They’ll probably just give you a tensor bandage to put on your ankle and maybe you’ll have to stay off it for a few days and go back to your crutches for a bit, but only for a little bit probably. I wouldn’t worry too much.”

“Oh,” he said, her voice was reassuring him . She didn’t sound panicked so why should he? He wasn’t particularly fond of his crutches, even with the Batman and Spider-man stickers he’d put on them, but he could use them again for a day or two. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world. 

“I just brought you in because its important to be careful. Just in case, you know, and your doctor would want to know, in case it affects your treatment or anything. That’s all really. How’s your leg feeling now? You seemed to be walking pretty well on it before. Was it hurting a lot then?”

“Not much,” he lied, thought it wasn’t a complete fib. It didn’t hurt that much compared to how it’d first hurt like it used to after he fell off the stairs or after some of his operations. It was manageable.

Kate was pleased Rumple was calming down. Sometimes she had serious reservations about the surgeries they’d let the doctors do on him. Okay, more than just “sometimes.” 

Chris said she knew it was really hard to see their little boy in pain or scared because he had to go to the hospital again or feeling left out of things other kids were doing, but it would be worth it. If he could walk on his own two feet without support or pain, it would give him more opportunities for work as an adult and he could have a fuller life, she argued.

Kate had grown up with a friend who had cerebral palsy and he seemed to have a pretty full life, she argued with Chris, but Rumple was different, his problem was correctable and before he’d been injured and the injury had been left to heal incorrectly he’d been able to run and walk. It made him sad he couldn’t do things he remembered himself doing before. He wanted to be the same as he was before. 

Of course it was worth it, the doctors said. Only the doctors had said the course of surgeries and hospital visits would be shorter than it ended up being. They were “overly optimistic” about the length of treatment and how good the outcome might be. Of course they had to tell them this several months down the road didn’t they? 

And whatever his future self might think of it, it was hard to tell, to make decisions for him. 

Whatever employment opportunities his future self might have, she could only see what he was losing right here, right now and that was a bit of his childhood, left right here in the hospital, when he’d already lost so much. 

She thought he could be having fun, doing art projects or sitting on the swing going high, not being traumatized everytime the big hospital building loomed into view, tucking his foot up underneath him, like someone just seeing the building made him feel like somebody was going to grab at it and hurt it again. It broke her heart. Him having nightmares about surgery, having to be careful with himself everyday, avoid the rough and tumble kids games and all sports, not even swimming. The doctors never told him how the experience might hurt him mentally after everything else that he’d been through sometimes she wished they could’ve just left him as is—she didn’t have a problem with him as he was. They could’ve given him crutches or whatever he needed to get about on his own and left him to the business of being a child, playing in the mud and sand and splashing in a paddling pool and getting covered in paint and ice cream and playing and going to school and not having to worry about not getting wet or being jostled or staying on the bench at recess or having to be taken out of class to go to the doctor’s yet again or waiting in the hospital terrified before yet another surgery or at home in bed doped up and crying with shame because he’d wet the bed again because he couldn’t get out of it in time or wasn’t aware he had to go anyway, because he was still all doped up and sleepy from painkillers. 

Lying on the couch, eyes glazed as he watched movies, without really watching them, waiting for the general anaestehtic to wear off enough for him to really come back to them. That sparkle in his eye getting a little duller each time. The wit becoming a little more sarcastic, bitter. She could tell even if no one else could and it worried her if he’d ever be able to truly get over it. 

All she wanted to do was pick him up and run out of the doctor’s office, away from there and take him to the biggest toy shop she could think of. She had to remind herself that it would help in the future and it would be worth it if he could walk when he was older. That even though he hated going, they knew what would be best for him in the long run. But did they? Did they really know what was best or what this was doing to him from day to day? Kate only knew you got to be a child for a very short time on this earth and once those years were gone you could never ever get them back, it didn’t matter how many comic book conventions you attended or cartoons you watched. When your childhood was gone, that was it. He’d already lost so much of his childhood before he even came to live with them, too. That was all she’d ever wanted to do most when she first met him, to give this serious, sad little boy a proper fun childhood—a good foundation for the rest of his life. And what kind of childhood were they giving him now? How much more his innocence and high spirits and fun had this all eaten up for him. 

They’d explained that once he was done the surgeries he would be able to walk again without it hurting and run like other kids. Right after his face lit up at the thought, he got that narrow-eyed calculating “is this a scam?” kind of look like maybe they were trying to pull a fast one on him. Now she realized he had maybe been right to be suspicious. Nobody had explained the real drawback to the process to him, how much it would hurt or how long he’d have to be left out of other kids’ games or really given them all they needed to make an informed decision. She wished someone had had the guts to lay it out for her like that. It might have staved off some of the shock at least, even if they elected to go with the surgery in the long run. It was useful knowing what you were up against. 

She gave Rum a sidelong glance as he sat in his new tight pants in the waiting room seat. She kind of knew the answer to the question, if she knew him the way she thought she knew him, about whether he’d go for the surgery or not. She knew he’d probably say he’d want to walk again like he had when he was little. He often told her how he hated being different from the other kids, but she could see how afraid he was of all these adults passing by in their medical outfits. His narrow shoulders trembled under her hand whenever a nurse passed by and she wondered not for the last time, how much fear could one tiny body of a small boy contain without bursting. 

The X-ray was a trial, but she managed to keep him distracted by reading his book to him. After the interminable wait was over the radiologist came in. 

Kate gave a sigh of relief when she looked with her over the bone in the scan. The bone on the monitor looked no different than the one from his last scan. Nice and straight and the pieces grown solidly together around the metal implant they had put in. Not at all like the first scans they’d seen of him when even to a completely untrained, unprofessional eye the bones looked misaligned and fused in the wrong way. 

The radiologist tapped the scan. “It’s nothing severe. Just a bit of a hairline fracture.”

“Hairline fracture?” she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary on the scan. 

“You have to look really closely to see it. It’s a crack along the bone. How did this happen?” the doctor asked Rumple.

“I had a bad dream,” the boy sniffed “and tried to go down the hall to mummies’ room in the dark and tripped.”

He looked glumly downwards after having to repeat the embarassing story. Kate held his hand.


	20. Fracture

“I had a bad dream and tried to go down the hall to mummies’ room in the dark and tripped,” the boy sniffed as Kate held his hand. “Please don’t be mad.”

The radiologist laughed. She had a nice laugh, Kate thought hopefully. “Oh honey, I’m not mad and it hasn’t interfered with the hardware from the surgeries, all that is alright, however we’re going to have to put you in a cast for—“

“Noooo! Cast! No cast! No cast!” screamed Rumple, terrified.

“Do you really think that’s necessary?” asked Kate quietly, trying to stay in control. “He really doesn’t want one as you can see,” she gestured helplessly at Rumple who was fidgeting all over the examining table as if looking for a means to escape. “He didn’t fall far very hard at all. He just tripped a little and—“

“It needn’t have been anything much in his case. His bone is still weak, and still growing in and is completely unused to bearing any weight and his muscles are still atrophied. He has no cushioning protection from muscles around it like you or I would have because the muscles are so insubstantial from years of limited use. It wouldn’t take much of a jolt to make it crack in his case, just a bit of a bang on his shin. Ordinarily we’d just have someone with this kind of fracture stay off it for a bit with crutches if it wasn’t particularly painful and brace it up with a tensor bandage or boot for a bit, but for Rumple, because of the hardware he’s got inside now, we have to make sure the bone knits back together as strong as it possibly can. If the crack is left on its own and spreads it could destroy all the work we’ve done. We have to take extra care that the crack in the bone fills in properly. I think the safest thing is to put it in a short cast for another six weeks or so. Get him to keep off it completely for that length of time. Then we’ll bring him back and have another look. If everything’s back to normal then we can get him back to wearing the boot again and proceeding with rehabilitation and physio like we were doing before.”

“Six weeks or so?” gulped Kate.

“Yeah,” said the doctor. “However long it takes that nasty crack to close up and go away. And guess what young man?” she said, coming down to Rumple’s level, “You get to pick your cast colour!”

Rumple looked at the doctor like she was insane. “I don’t care about the colour,” he said. “Just-- can I still wear my stretchy jeans underneath?”

The doctor’s mouth twitched a little trying to suppress a smile. “They are very cool jeans but I don’t think they’ll fit underneath.” 

“Then no cast, please,” said Rumple firmly, trying his best to be polite, when all he really wanted to do was punch the stupid doctor. 

“Sorry,” said the doctor. “No deal, little fellow. I’ll send in the technician. In the meantime it might help if you rolled his pants up or took them off so they could apply the cast.”

“Sure. Thank you doctor,” said Kate, with a sinking heart as she look at Rumple’s defiant expression and began to work on his pants.

Much to her horror Kate realized, as they waited for the cast technician to come in, that Rumple’s pants would genuinely not come off. His ankle had swollen to more than twice the size it had been when she’d put them on in the morning. Why in the world had Chris bought him such tight tight pants? When she tried to roll them up he cried in pain and they wouldn’t go over his ankle. Then when she tried to roll them down they got stuck again below his knee, with the same problem. 

The technician entered and Kate explained sheepishly that she couldn’t get her son’s pants off, feeling like the world’s most incompetent mother.

“It’s not a problem. Just put the cast over!” Rumple insisted desperately. “I can wear them for the rest of the month until they take it off!” 

“Hmmm, that really doesn’t seem advisible,” said the technician. Then she gave Rumple a funny look he didn’t trust at all, brought out a pair of medical scissors and went snip snip along the seam before he even knew what had happen. Suddenly, she had two clips in her hands and was clipping the two loose ends of the ruined pantleg up to the elastic at his waist before he could say a word. 

Even Kate looked shocked.

“There you go,” said the technician with clinical efficiently, and began to prepare the stockingette to put on his injured foot. 

Rumple stared at his ruined pants in disbelief. 

“What the fuck?” he said. Then he punched the cast technician with his little fist right in the face. 

Rumple stared at the cast technician in shock. He couldn’t believe it. He’d punched an adult. 

He looked at his tiny fist then he looked at Kate, his eyes as wide as saucers.

And Kate…Kate exploded with laughter. 

Kate couldn’t help it, all the built up nerves and pressure just exploded out of her and suddenly she was laughing hysterically. The more she thought about how wrong it was to laugh, the more she kept on laughing. It was terrible, awful disciple, it was sending Rumple all the wrong signals, he didn’t need positive reinforcement for that sort of behavior, but- but—the look on that bossy technician’s face. “Oh my God! Rumple!” laughed Kate even harder.

The cast technician whose cheek was bright pink now where Rumple had punched it glared daggers at the both of them. 

“I’ll just leave you two here and get someone else. It’s time for my break now anyway,” she said icily. “Settle in,” she growled, rubbing her cheek. “You might be in for a serious wait.” 

“I understand,” said Kate, recovering some of her composure. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well, a bit late for that now,” said the technician and she left with an undignified wiggle of her posterior and suddenly Rumple caught Kate’s eye and he began to giggle too, high pitched and imp-like and that set her off giggling again too. 

“No, no Rumple, how could? What did we tell you about using your words?”

“You mean like the f-word?” 

“No, no, no. Gah! Rumple! What am I going to do with you?” 

“Ice cream?” he asked hopefully. 

“Rumple!” 

“Please!” he protested. He turned on Kate using his full force puppy dog eyes mode. 

“Well… you really did like those pants…”

“Uh-huh.”

“But you better be good for the next cast technician who comes in, or we’ll be waiting here all night for them to find someone else.”

“I’ll be good as gold, I promise,” Rumple smirked. Well, technically it was true. He always was good as Gold, how could he be anything else?

“Oh I see you what you did there,” laughed Kate slyly. “I’ve got your number, Rumple Gold.” 

He grinned and she ruffled his hair. 

It was going to be a long wait.


	21. Needs

Rumple was, as promised “good as gold” for the new casting technician, even when he ended up with a yellow cast, (not his first or last choice) because apparently all the other coloured fiberglass cast material was already taken. 

“I don’t know about you,” said Kate as she helped him hop off the table, “but I’ve had enough of this place for one day.”

They took a cab home. By this point Kate had gone all serious and worried that laughing when he hit the cast technician wasn’t sending him the right message about violence. 

Rumple was quiet, staring out the window scratching a place under his knee at the top of the cast. 

Kate cleared her throat. “Rumple, remember how Mummy Chris talked to you about using you words when you kicked that boy Killian at school and got in trouble?”

Rumple shrugged, he didn’t really want to get into this now. “He said I was a baby because I still had a stroller.”

“And that was a very mean and insensitive thing for him to say, but that doesn’t mean it was okay to hurt him because of it.”

“I kicked him right in the nuts,” said Rumple with a satisfied smile at the remembrance of the act and Killian’s shocked face. He had fond memories of aiming his good foot straight at that nasty boy’s crotch and the satisfied squish of the toe of his sneaker hitting something soft and squishy. 

“But did that really help anything? Said Kate exasperated. “I mean. In the long run?”

Rumple thought about it. It had felt good to kick Killian, it was true, and Killian had left him alone for a day, but then the other children had started up a rumour that he used diapers and peed himself and needed help going to the washroom. Much to his dismay it spread around the class like wildfire. He couldn’t prove that bratty Kilian hadn’t started it. The worst part, Rumple thought, was that it wasn’t actually a made up story—it was true. 

He really had wet himself on his first day at school without one of his mums there. Kate had been coming with him for a few weeks to help him get adjusted and it was the first day he’d been at school alone. He’d had a really big cast back then, all the way up to his hip and it was super hard for him to get around. Plus he didn’t remember where the bathroom was and was afraid to call attention to himself by asking. 

He hid under the cushion pile in the wetness to disguise his shame thinking no one would be the wiser. But then the teaching assistant who had been cleaning up the nearby play-doh table sniffed the air. 

“Ugh,” she wrinkled up her nose in disgust. “That smell.”

She walked around and spied a foot in a grown-up’s Batman sock peeping out from under the cushions and called him out. “Rumple, is that you in there?” 

“Fuck,” he said, having still been unaccustomed to adjusting his vocabulary for “proles” as Astrid called regular people, who didn’t like the way they talked at his old house. Back at his old house people always thought it was cute and funny hearing his high piping voice use bad words. And sometimes he forgot that people at school and other places didn’t feel the same way and would get mad at him for it. 

He tried his best to tuck his bad foot up beneath him, but it was all straight and stiff from the long cast and stuck out no matter how many cushions he burrowed under. He hoped if he stayed quiet the T.A. wouldn’t bother with him, but this just made her more persistent.

Eventually the TA got him out from under the cushions frowning.   
“Oh great, now I’m going to have to take those cushions in to be washed too,” she grumbled. “and we just got them cleaned last week after Billy threw up on them. And you peed all over your cast. Is that allowed? Isn’t it not supposed to get wet? Maybe we should call your mums. Damn, what if they’re mad? Why didn’t you say anything or tell us you need to go potty—“ Rumple cringed as “potty” sounded so babyish. “You understand what that is don’t you?”

Rumple nodded miserably. He hated when people thought he was stupid just because he didn’t talk much.

“C’mon let’s get you changed into your spare clothes. And next time, for Pete’s sake tell somebody all right? Don’t be embarrassed. We understand if you need help because you’re special needs. Don’t be ashamed, you can come right up to us and ask.” 

But the more she said things like “don’t be ashamed” and “understanding you need help” the more mortified he felt. 

He was not entirely sure what “special needs” was. There was a boy who had a grown-up helper in one of the other kindergarten classes who sometimes crawled around on the ground like Rumple did and only played with his grown-up helper at recess. Though still very shy, Rumple thought perhaps he could approach this boy and make friends with him. He already knew that children on their own or with adults, were a lot less likely to refuse to play with him, because their adults didn’t want to make him feel bad. So dragging his heavy cast behind him he crawled up to the other boy on the carpet who seemed busy twirling around a plastic drinking straw for some reason. 

“Hey there,” said Rumple softly. When the boy still didn’t look up he touched Rumple lightly touched his arm. 

And then the boy, who was a lot stronger than he looked, bit Rumple and pushed him away. Then he began to scream, high pitched and without words. Rumple lay on the ground, stunned. The adult helper who’d been looking away for a minute turned back towards her charge with a look of despair. 

“Oh crap, what’d you do? He was just settled down and now look. Don’t you know he screams and hits if you touch him and he doesn’t know you.”

Rumple sat up and shook his head as the helper looked him over.

“Oh, you’re the new boy. I guess you didn’t know he’s special needs. Sorry, but you’re probably better playing with someone else once he gets like this.” 

So Rumple crawled away and hid under the cushions, where he could quietly observe this other child, who he could now clearly see wasn’t really like him at all. The little boy could apparently walk properly, but chose for some unfathomable reason to crawl on the ground. He was seemed to like putting things in his mouth that Rumple knew weren’t good to eat like crayons, shoelaces, plastic bags and food that fell on the floor. 

The day Rumple had the bathroom accident, and the T.A. picked him up and said he was special needs, like the boy who ate crayons off the floor, he’d been aware of a brown haired, blue eyed boy staring at him from the corner of the sand tray playing with a tall, dark haired girl. They watched him the whole time, as the T.A. took him to the back and struggled to get his bulky pee-smelling sweatpants and underwear off over his huge cast and helped him into his spare pairs. When he sat on the floor waiting while the T.A. went off to look for his crutches, he could see them approach cautiously, whispering and giggling behind their hands. Thankfully, the TA returned before they could say anything to him directly, and took him to the office to call his mums. 

No one said anything about the incident when he returned to school the next day and he thought everybody had forgotten. But after kicking Killian he realized that the other boy had not forgotten at all and was now gleefully spreading the story to the other kids. 

He was glad he still had Victor and Ruby and Belle as friends. Victor and Ruby were in grade 2 and not in his class so they hadn’t heard about it. Belle hadn’t joined the class until later in the year and seeing the humiliating incident. He hadn’t told her, of course and hoped to keep it a deep dark secret as long as possible.

Rumple had lots of deep dark secrets he never told other people. Probably the biggest secret he never told was how his leg getting hurt and then never growing, was really his own stupid fault for acting like an idiot on the stairs all those years ago. He was terrified no one would help him if they knew the truth, even Astrid and Kate and Chris. He knew for sure Malcolm would’ve yelled at him for it. The bathroom accident was another thing he never wanted anyone to know. And then Killian and Milah had spread it around. It wasn’t that other kids didn’t have the occasional lapse in potty training, it’s just that Milah noticed how much it bothered Rumple when they talked about it, and now they just couldn’t resist doing it. 

“No ,it didn’t help anything in the long run,” Rumple admitted to Kate. “Killian was just mean in a different way and got his friends to help too, spreading that rumour about me.”

“Which reminds me—me and Chris have to go into that school and have a serious talk with your teacher. Those bloody kids need a serious lesson in empathy.”

“Again? I think maybe she doesn’t like you coming in and talking to her all the time,” said Rumple nervously. “Other kids’ parents don’t come in so much.” 

“I know, sweetie. I know you don’t like her to single you out, but that sort of thing shouldn’t be happening. It’s not right. I can understand why you didn’t use your words with Killian. It doesn’t mean that I approve, but it wasn’t a very sympathetic thing for him to say. He doesn’t realize not everyone is as lucky as him. It’s very bad to criticize someone for something they can’t help. He should know not everyone’s body works the same way.” 

“Using words doesn’t always work,” said Rumple. “I used my words today and it didn’t help at all.”

“When did you do that?”

“I said, no cast and I don’t want a cast and nobody listened. I said the words, I said them loud and clear. Nobody ever ever listens to me,” he sighed despondently and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m too small. No one cares what I want.”

“That’s not true, me and Chris care.” 

“So why did you let them mess about with my foot again?” he asked plaintively.

Kate sighed. “Rum, sometimes you don’t always see the big picture. Being a parent can be really hard. Sometimes you have to know what’s best for your kids and do it, even when they themselves don’t want it. In the long run I know you want to be able to walk without your leg hurting you all the time and to not have to use crutches or a stick anymore.”

Rumple looked out the window. “I think the doctors are lying to you. I won’t ever be like.”

“Why do you say that? You told me you used to walk like that before. It could happen again.”

He gave her a cautious look.

“You told me yourself you wanted to walk like you used to.”

“Wanting something and it being real are different things,” he shook his head. “I don’t want to be in a cast anymore! It’s not gonna work anyway!” He thrust his feet out angrily against the back of the cab seat. The driver looked back at him in the rearview and Rumple became quiet again. “None of the other kids understand about it and never invite me to play games with them because they think I can’t do anything. I hate them, all of them.”

“Even Belle?” she asked softly. 

Rumple thought about Belle and how she talked about going to see her mum in the hospital and her mum telling her she was sad because she couldn’t come home or go to work because her lungs were filled with fluid and she coughed all the time and had this weird disease called cyst-something. Belle understood that sometimes people’s bodies didn’t work the way they wanted them to and how frustrating that could be. Her mum had taught her lots of games to play that didn’t require running around or jumping up and down and all about using your imagination and how to make up cool stories. Belle knew plenty of ways of playing where Rumple wouldn’t feel left out. She was the best friend in the world a person could have ever!

“No,” he said to Kate. “Belle is different. Belle is the best!”


	22. Home Again

When they got home a weary Kate picked Rumple up and lay him down, stretched out on the couch with his hurt foot elevated on a pillow. She turned on the DVD player. It was a movie Belle had brought over because she wanted Rumple to watch it with her. 

It was “Beauty and the Beast,” the cartoon Disney version. Belle had forgot it in the player, taking home an empty case by mistake. They hadn’t had a chance to watch it together as her father had picked her up when they were only a minute or two into the film. 

Kate gave him some orange juice and a children’s cherry flavoured Tylenol and took one for herself for good measure as she could feel a headache coming on. It had certainly been a trying day. 

“I’ll go make supper in a minute,” she murmured. “Just want look at the paper for a sec.” She sat down heavily in her favourite armchair with the newspaper in hand and was asleep in an instant, tired out both physically and emotionally.

Rumple glanced at his foot resting on the cushion. Why a yellow cast? He supposed he should feel some kind of pride at having collected all the cast colours at the hospital, but really he just felt like crap.

He stared at the screen with glazed, sleepy eyes. Then an old man’s voice said in the voice over “Long ago a prince lived in a shining castle…” 

The pictures onscreen looked like some kind of stained glass. They did not move. How strange. He wondered if the whole movie would be like this. And he was just about to drop off to sleep when the music soared and a cartoon woman came dancing down a village street. Her name was Belle, just like his friend and she was singing. All the people in the town were gossiping, singing about her, how she was a “peculiar mademoiselle” and “doesn’t quite fit in” and she was borrowing books from some old guy in a store.

Rumple quickly understood why this was Belle’s favourite movie. 

“I’m named after this movie,” he remembered her saying, holding the worn DVD case in her hands. “My Mum saw it when she was a little girl and she said she loved Belle because she had brown hair and brown eyes and liked to read just like her! And when she had me—even though her doctors said she wasn’t supposed to have kids because of her lungs being all cysty and stuff—she called me Belle because Belle was her favourite name in all the world since she was ten years old! She’d been saving it all that long time since she was a little girl just for me!”

Rumple wondered if his own mum had saved the name “Rupert” for him for such a long time. He had his doubts.

The film went on and more characters were introduced. Gaston in the movie kind of reminded him of Killian, someone who was tall, handsome, strong and popular, but also very mean and insensitive and more than a little bit stupid. 

Sometimes Killian at school liked to tease Belle and call her “Disney Princess Belle.” 

Belle would get upset and say she was named after Belle, but Belle was not a princess in the movie. She was the daughter of a simple inventor first and foremost and she was SMART and could figure things out and was not some stuffed up royalty born with a silver spoon in her mouth wearing fluffy ballgowns all the time, mooning about when her prince would come or silly stuff like that. All that princess crap stuff was a marketing gimmick her mum told her. Of course no one in kindergarten knew what a marketing gimmick was. 

“Didn’t any of you watch the movie?” she asked in frustration as Milah and Killian laughed only harder at her the more specific and passionate Belle got on the subject of the movie.

They thought passion of any kind, especially passion for books which they couldn’t read and old movies that they didn’t watch was stupid and silly. They were too cool for anything like that. 

However Rumple loved how passionate and excited Belle got about things. He liked how when she made up stories with him, she got so excited her hands moved around in what Maurice referred to as her “flappy hands of delight.” The motions reminded Rumple a little bird trying to fly her way off the ground from the strength of her imaginings. Sometimes she would get so excited by some new idea she would tremble, almost like she was vibrating internally from the humming of her mind like a Belle-shaped motor. She knew to control it in school it so other kids didn’t make fun of her when she got over-excited, but she knew Rumple didn’t mind and would flap her hands excitedly quite unconsciously when they were together and that made him happy.

Sometimes Belle wondered about what her mum had been like as a little girl. She talked to Rumple about it, because Belle liked to talk about everything she thought. She imagined the movie had appealed to her Mum, because it fit her life, growing up as a brown haired, sickly, bookish girl in the narrow minded world of small town provincial Ontario, longing to one day see the world.

Had she known she would marry an Australian man named Maurice and have a little girl named Belle way way back before she’d ever watched the movie, or was watching the movie what made her find a man named Maurice to have a little girl with who had brown hair and hazel eyes just like Belle in the movie? It made Belle’s head feel funny just thinking about it. 

And where was movie Belle’s mother in the story? Was she in the hospital with cystic fibrosis, too? Was she waiting for her new lungs to arrive, just like Belle’s mother Rose? In the pit of her stomach, Belle thought maybe not. Belle’s mum told her that a long time ago when she herself was a little girl there hadn’t been such a thing as lung transplants. Doctors had told Rose she wouldn’t live very long, not like other people, so she had to do everything right away, have all her adventures now, before it was too late. Rose had always lived thinking that. Rose said she wasn’t afraid of dying itself, only of pain and being helpless and not finishing all the things she meant to do in her life, all the adventures she still wanted to have. But most of all she was afraid of Maurice and Belle being all alone without her to take care of them. 

Belle figured out that movie-Belle’s mum had probably died and the thought terrified her. She didn’t want her mum to die! 

She prayed every night that Santa would bring new lungs for her mum. They didn’t have a chimney in the apartment, but she had the Christmas stocking her mum made for her when she was a baby that her dad let her keep hung up on her corkboard above her desk. He never asked her why and she never told him the real reason, but every night she prayed to Santa even though it wasn’t Christmas and every morning as she checked the stocking she kept her eyes tight shut, hoping for the slightly squishy feeling she imagined a pair of lungs would make inside, but none ever appeared. She wondered if she would really have to wait for Christmas for the magic to work and if her Mum would be all right in the hospital until then. 

Rumple watched the movie, soon caught up in the plot, forgetting about his achy leg. Outside the windows of Kate and Chris’s house the sky turned from blue to pink. The sun set just as the Beast and Belle in the movie kissed and his spell was broken. Rumple watched entranced. 

The saddest part, he thought, was when the Beast was sitting in his room and the household appliances told him the bad people from the village were coming to attack the castle and all the Beast said, so sadly too, was “let them come.” 

“Don’t give up Beast, don’t give up!” thought Rumple fiercely at the screen. At the end the Beast and Gaston had a big fight which was a little scary, but also kind of cool and Belle and the Beast made up and kissed and then the spell was broken and the Beast turned into a man and all the household appliances transformed into people. 

Rumple found this part rather unsettling. He thought about Belle kissing him and him turning into some other person and it disturbed him. Sometimes on the playground sitting on his usual bench he imagined what it would be like to be one of the other little boys. He thought if he was someone else he’d have lots of friends and no bad memories and he wouldn’t be afraid of stuff all the time. He’d live with the mum and dad he was born to who would be nice. He wouldn’t have two mums and wouldn’t have been adopted out of some nasty drug house like he saw on TV. He’d be able to run and jump like other kids and he’d be tall and strong from getting lots to eat when he was little. 

But seeing the Beast turn into another person and feeling weird about it, made Rumple realize something. He really didn’t want to turn into another person, even a person who didn’t have a hurt leg. He didn’t want to be someone else who didn’t look like him. He knew his own face and he was used to it. What was more, he liked being himself these days, Rumple Gold, who had brown hair and brown eyes and also had a really cool best friend named Belle and two other awesome friends and his very own Playmobil dark castle! He decided he wanted to be himself always forever and no one else, ever. 

Also, he decided he really really liked his two mums and wouldn’t change them. They were nice and they were funny and they loved him. He didn’t want someone else’s old fashioned regular mum and dad for any price.Despite all that wishing and hoping he could be some other kid, he didn’t really want that, not for real, not anymore, like he used to when he felt sad or left out. He didn’t think Belle would want him to change if she kissed him. Somehow, for some reason, he realized, she just thought he was cool and it never seemed that important to her whether he crawled around the carpet way more than other kids his ages or used crutches or went home in a stroller. 

In truth, Belle liked that Rumple listened to her, instead of ignoring her like the teachers who were bored of her longwinded explanations for simple class questions and he never thought the things she was interested in were silly. He enjoyed playing complex pretend games with her and most of the time he let her pick the stories they did, which she secretly quite liked. He never tried to boss her around just because he was a boy and bigger than her. They played different characters and she usually let him be a wizard, which was his preference. He loved anything with magic especially after she showed him how to use one of his crutches as a Gandalf-style magic staff. He really got into yelling “You shall not pass!” at his mums around the house, blocking various doorways in an overly dramatic fashion, pretending he had a mane of white hair blowing out behind him and that his blue terry cloth bathrobe was a long white wizard robe. 

He cared about her feelings too and always defended her and stood up to other kids when they said she didn’t really read the books she took out from the library and was just being a show-off. Whenever she was sad about her mum he tried to cheer her up, too. 

Also, and this was Belle’s own personal little secret, she thought Rumple was the most interesting looking boy in the class. She liked his big brown eyes and funny pointy nose and the fact that he was the right size for her to hug. Sometimes, when she knew he was focused on the teacher at circle time, she’d just stare at his face and completely zone out for a while. She liked that he was so much older than her. She found kids her own age unbearably dull and insensitive for the most part, even at her old school. The fact that she was best friends with a seven year old (!) made her feel super mature. 

Of course, Rumple didn’t know all of what Belle thought of him, or even that she thought about him so much, but some of it came out just in her voice when she spoke to him or her cheerful tone when she saw his face at school. He wondered if his eyes lit up in the same way when he saw her as hers did when she saw him. He couldn’t remember anyone ever being so enthusiastic about his presence before. 

The credits rolled and Rumple snuggled down into the pillow on the couch, warm thoughts of Belle and a happiness that he was himself, glowing in his heart. His eyes blinked drowsily and the next thing he knew he was out like a light.


	23. Chris returns

Rumple was awakened to the sound of the front door shutting and Chris saying "Hey guys, I'm home!"

Kate snorted and sat up from where her head had been lolling on the arm of the easy chair, but Chris was already in the den.

"Why are the lights out in the house?" Chris asked worriedly.

It had been light out when they had come home and they didn't need them, but now it was dark.

Chris flicked on the lights.

"Oh my God! What happened?"

She ran over to Rumple as soon as she spotted him on the couch in a cast and scooped him up in her arms.

"Uh, I didn't make dinner, fell asleep as soon as we got home," said Kate sheepishly. "I was going to phone you, but I fell asleep and—"

"What happened to him?" cried Chris, panicking.

Catching her mood Rumple started to whimper feeling a little frightened himself.

"He's fine," said Kate wearily. "He just—"

"He's fine? Look at his foot! Did you take him to the doctor?"

"No, Chris I put on the fucking fiberglass cast on myself! What do you think?"

"She didn't!" insisted Rumple, worried Kate was going to get in trouble. "The cast lady did! Only I hit her when she cut my pants so then we had to wait and the other cast lady came and then she put the cast on and it's yellow!" Rumple blurted out as quick as he could.

"What's he talking about-hit the cast lady?" asked Chris.

"Punched her in the face, yeah," admitted Kate.

"Oh my God. Rumple, how could you?"

"My pants!" he cried pointing to his cut up pantleg, now pinned up above his knee. "She wrecked them! She was a big meany head! I tried to use my words but no one listened!"

"But Kate, how did this happen? We've been so careful? Did you let him—"

"It must've been when he tripped and fell coming into our bedroom when the had that bad dream last night. We didn't stretch his ankle before he went to bed either," said Kate guiltily. "I- I just forgot, what with everything going on and-"

"But he didn't even really fall? He just tripped. It wasn't far. How could it—"

"Yeah I know. They said it's just a hairline fracture, they usually don't even put people in a cast for it, but because his leg is still delicate they wanted to make sure it's immobilized so the crack closes up properly."

"But, but he seemed okay last night and I—"

Kate sighed. "He doesn't have any muscle around it, Chris, hardly any fat either. Just bone and that's it, nothing to cushion a blow."

Rumple didn't like the sound of that. He wanted to have lots of muscles everywhere. He wanted to be strong, strong, strong. He started to cry.

"Oh great, now you've gone and upset him. You'd think you'd be a little more sensitive—"

"You didn't sit in the ER waiting room all day with a child who kept trying to run out of the place on a broken leg!"

"Rumple? You tried to runaway?" asked Chris worriedly.

"No-oh," said Rumple. "Not exactly."

"You know you're not supposed to leave our sight in public. I thought you were more sensible than that. That hospital is huge! What if you got lost? You could've damaged your leg even more."

Chris's bottle green eyes were staring at him so intently, Rumple just had to tell, he felt so bad, he was nearly cracking under the pressure of keeping it inside.

"I- I thought—I thought—" he gulped nervously.

"What did you think?"

"I- I-"

Kate rubbed his back slowly in a circular motion and then said in a calm deliberate voice. "It's all right Rumple. No one will get mad. He thought he saw Astrid, Chris."

Chris's eyebrows shot up. "But—"

Kate looked Chris in the eyes. "Rumple was frightened and upset about being in the hospital again. He thought we told him he wouldn't need anymore casts. He didn't understand. He thought we lied to him. I think if I was in that situation, I'd want my best friend by my side again too, wouldn't you?"

Chris understood Kate's implication and dipped her head to Rumple. "I'm so sorry Rumple. We didn't mean to deceive you. No one did. We honestly thought it would be okay and you wouldn't need a cast again. Sometimes even grown-ups can be wrong about these things."

"But I wrecked it again!" sniffed Rumple sadly looking down. "I didn't mean to! I should've been more careful! Now the doctor will get mad."

"No, no sweetie you didn't wreck anything. And nobody's mad at you. We're mad at the situation and a little frustrated, just like you are. Sometimes situations we don't like happen and it's nobody's fault. Shitty things just occur sometimes and it's out of our control."

Rumple thought about this. "Like Belle's mum being sick?"

"That's right. Stuff just happens and sometimes it's good stuff and sometimes it's not so good stuff, like Rose being sick and you getting a cast and it isn't right or fair, but that's the way it is."

"The way it is sucks!"

"I know," said Chris and kissed him on the head. "So what have you been watching here?"

"Beauty and the Beast."

"Yeah? Did you like it?"

"Uh-huh. Mummy Chris?"

"Yes Rumple?"

"I don't want to be anybody different anymore. I just want to be me. Like if someone kissed me, I don't want to change into a different boy. I thought I might want to, but I don't think I do anymore."

"Well, that's good, cause we don't another little boy, we like the one we've got right here," said Chris bemused and gave him a hug, the things he came up with sometimes!

Rumple beamed and Kate kissed him on the cheek and then held his hands at arm's length to look at him.

"Ah- ha! Still Rumple!"

"Let me try you now," said Chris and kissed Kate on the cheek.

Suddenly, Kate sank down to the floor and began to wiggle around.

"Hiss, hiss," hissed Kate. "Oh help! I've been turned into a snake! Oh no, oh no! Quickly I need the kiss of true love to make me better!"

Rumple wrapped his small arms around her neck and kissed her on the other cheek.

"Neigh neigh!" suddenly Kate was on all fours bucking around like a horse. "Oh help! Rumple it didn't work!"

Rumple giggled and held out his hand. "Here, have some oats and a carrot."

Kate bent down over his hand and pretended to eat making snuffling sounds.

Chris rolled her eyes. "You two! I'm going to order us some pizza!"

"Mushrooms please!" called out Kate.

"You can't talk! You're a horse!" insisted Rumple giggling.


	24. A Call from Maurice

At dinner, Rumple insisted on watching the part with the dancing cutlery in "Beauty and the Beast" again. The doctor said he had to rest at home with his leg elevated for two days before he could go back to school on his crutches, so they all ate dinner in the den with the pizza on the coffee table.

"The candlestick guy should've ordered pizza," said Rumple. "Then they wouldn't have needed so much cutlery and the Beast would have never found out what they were doing."

"Good point," said Kate, "only I don't think they had a telephone."

Just as she said the word "telephone," eerily enough her cellphone began to ring in the front pocket of her coat.

Chris was closest to the coat rack.

"Get that for me will you sweetie?" asked Kate.

"You'd think you were the one with the broken leg," grumbled Chris as she got up to get the phone.

Kate stuck out her tongue at Chris's back and Rumple giggled.

"Quiet you," Kate admonished him in a mock stern voice, mimicking the Beast onscreen, "or it'll be off to the dungeon!"

The plates on the TV screen were singing "Be Our Guest" and Rumple was wiggling along to the song on the his seat and getting pizza crumbs everywhere and blobs of tomato sauce all down his shirt, but Kate wasn't paying attention. She was watching Chris's face as her partner picked up the phone.

As Chris listened to the caller several emotions seem to pass over her face in a matter of second.

Kate was thinking of the call about Rumple's dad again and got scared.

She got up and approached Chris. "Chris? Chris who is it?" she asked.

"It's Maurice," said Chris.

Rumple, entranced with the spectacle of singing forks diving into an enormous punch bowl on the screen, totally missed the fact that his mums had taken the phone and gone out of the room to have a private chat.


	25. On a Mission

When they returned Belle and the Beast were playing in the snow.

"Can we rewind it to the singing plates again?" Rumple asked as they reentered the room. He hated snow.

"Let's just pause the movie now," said Kate softly, suddenly serious.

"Why? What's going on?"

Chris took the TV remote and paused the movie.

Rumple focused his gaze on his mums. Kate was now sitting on the arm of her favourite chair and Chris was perched on the edge of the coffee table.

"Rumple," said Chris, "Me and your Mummy Kate need your help."

Of all the things he expected them to say, he hadn't expected that. What did they need his help for? What could he do for them?

"You know how Belle's mum has been in the hospital for a long time?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, she's there because her lungs got sick and stopped working properly. She needs special machines to help her breath."

"I know, Belle told me." Rumple looked at his mums. Why were they telling him this? Belle had explained it all to him. He knew her mom was very sick.

Oh.

Suddenly, a terrible thought occurred to him. He didn't like where this was going. "Did—did Belle's mum…?" He didn't want to say die, because he was afraid if he said that terrible word it would make it really happen. His heart went out to Belle.

"No, no, no," said Kate quickly. "Belle's mum has been waiting for a long time to get a new pair of lungs because the lungs she was born with aren't good anymore.

"A new pair of lungs? Why is it taking so long? Can't they just give them to her?"

Rumple stared at them confused as his mums struggled to explain it in a way that would make sense to him.

"Yes, but it was taking them a really long time to find just the right pair. You know like clothes or shoes, they have to be just right, a perfect fit, and matching her blood and everything or they just won't work. And now… well, it seems like they've finally found a pair that will match!"

"And Belle's mum got new lungs and is okay now?"

"Not exactly. It isn't easy to get new lungs put inside."

Oh, Rumple nodded. He understood this part from personal experience. "She needs surgery right?"

"That's right. Maurice is going to the hospital to be with her now, so that he is there when she wakes up from the surgery and is around so the doctors can tell him if anything isn't going right."

"Is Belle going too?"

"No. Kids aren't allowed to go."

"So she's going to stay at home? All alone without her mum and her dad too?" asked Rumple alarmed, thinking of all the times he'd spent alone by himself in the big old house. "She'll be scared! Quick! We have to go to her! We have to help look after her!"

Kate smiled. She loved how much Rum cared for his friend. "We thought you might see it that way Rum, so we invited Belle to come stay with us for a bit."

"Yay! So then she won't be alone! And we'll have fun and I won't be bored! Yah! You're the best mums ever! "

"Uh-huh, that's right. But first you have to calm down Rumple. Because right now, Belle's dad says, Belle is really scared and worried about her mum. Also she's never even slept anywhere without her mum or dad nearby. We don't want to freak her out any more by yelling a lot and frightening her, okay?"

"Why's she scared about her mum? Isn't it good that she's getting new lungs and is going to be all better?"

"Well, her mum has been very very sick and her body is not so healthy. Sometimes an operation like this- it might be too much for a person who is that sick. Sometimes they don't recover afterwards, so nobody's really sure what's going to happen. Belle knows that and that's why she's so worried about her mum."

Rumple sat up a little straighter. "But how can I help with that? I can't help her mum!"

"It's true, but you can help Belle. We were hoping maybe you could distract her a bit so she forgets her worries a little. Play with her, help her. She likes playing with you. Make her know that whatever happens she's got a friend in you and that she can feel safe and comfy and at home here."

"Absolutely!" Rumple enthused. "I can do that! I can help Belle! I'm super good at being distracting!"

"Okay, great, now it's getting late now and it's almost time for bed. Maurice will be coming by with Belle to drop her off with her stuff on his way to the hospital. So let's get you changed into your jammies and with your face washed and teeth brushed so you'll be all ready for when Belle comes."

Rumple nodded seriously. He was ready to take on this very important mission.


	26. Belle sleeps over

Soon Chris came down with the pullups for Rumple and his old Spiderman pajamas with leg cut off them, so he could get his cast foot through it and helped him get changed. Then she whisked his day clothes away and brought down his toothbrush with a little blue blob of Crest on the end and cup to rinse his mouth and a wet washcloth for his face. Soon he was all cleaned and dressed and hadn't had to move his leg too much or get off the sofa.

"Just don't get used to this mister," said Kate as he wriggled cozily into the cushions and fiddled with the TV remote.

He usually made a fuss about getting into his pajamas and getting ready for bed, but tonight he was well behaved and quick.

Really he just didn't want Belle to have to see that he needed his mums to help him get changed and ready for bed or, most embarrassing of all, that he still wore pullups. He was fully toilet trained, of course, but if he had to go in the night, the whole involved process of putting on his miniature miner's helmet in the dark, getting off his high bed, lowering himself slowly to the floor and then crawlingdown the upstairs hallway to the bathroom and then getting up again inside and maneuvering around and removing his pants, required more time than he could go without bursting. He'd tried it with crutches, but that was even worse, as he was very clumsy in the dark and hopping about just made his control worse. He did like the miner's helmet. He could crawl around in the dark and pretend he was inside a cave discovery a secret diamond mine.

Of course when Belle arrived with Maurice he could plainly see that he could have practically strutted around naked wearing the pullups on his head and she wouldn't have even noticed. She seemed so preoccupied that she barely looked around her, just standing anxiously in the doorway sucking the ear of her stuffed bunny, Alice. She was wearing pajamas too. Underneath her coat, he could see her pajamas bottoms peeking out and she wore no socks with her sneakers. She shifted the straps of big blue backpack on her back nervously from hand to hand.

"Hey Belle! Over here!" Rumple called, waving frantically.

She looked a little puzzled that he didn't get up and come to greet her, but walked over still sucking a bit on her bunny's ear.

"Hey, you brought Alice!" enthused Rumple. "Can I see her?"

"Uh-huh," said Belle quietly and handed Rumple her bunny so he could look at her.

"I like her bow," he said, desperately trying to think of things to say. He'd never felt so nervous in front of his friend except on that very first day they met when he was hiding in the cushions. "It's so nice and blue and shiny!"

"You have a cast again?" she asked, pointing.

"Yeah. I got in a fight with the first cast lady at the hospital and then I punched her and then they had to bring a new cast lady."

Belle's eyes went wide. "You got in a fight…with a grown up? A real fight like with hitting and stuff?"

"Kind of."

"How come?"

"She ruined my pants so we couldn't be matchies anymore. I was super angry! I was so mad I forgot to use my words anymore."

"Woah, that's crazy!"

"Yeah, that's what my Moms said. You wanna play dark castle? Only you'll have to bring it up to the sofa, 'cause I have stay here like this."

"Oaky," said Belle and brought the Dark Castle up to the coffee table and they played with the figures in it making up a story until it was time for bed.

When it was time for bed Chris picked up Rumple and carried him upstairs while Belle followed behind them.

Rumple made sure to wave at her over Chris's shoulder so she knew which way to go and didn't feel too scared.

"Rumple, stop squirming!" said Chris.

"I'm not squirming I'm showing Belle where to go so she doesn't get lost. She needs to know she's on the right stairs like they do with us at school."

"There's only one set of stairs in the house, Rumple. She's not going to get lost."

Rumple continued to wave at Belle excitedly so he was sure she knew.

They showed Belle to the guest room which was also Kate's office, only with all the papers removed from the futon couch and the futon part folded out and made flat so it was a bed.

Belle eyed the futon bed suspiciously. She'd never slept anywhere without her My Little Pony comforter on top of the bed. No matter which home she lived in she always had it with her. The room smelled a bit like pencil shavings and was full of Kate's weird art equipment which was shoved off to the side and funny drawings of comic book people on the walls. There was a creepy poster of robots from Dr. Who in a frame. It wasn't like Belle's room at all with all her familiar books and stuffies. Belle felt scared, but she didn't say anything. She didn't want Kate and Chris to get mad.

Her father told her how important it was that she listen to Rumple's mums and make sure to do everything they said. She was to be on her best behavior because they were doing the French family a favour letting her stay with them at such short notice.

Rumple waved Belle goodnight from over Chris's shoulder and blew her a kiss as Chris took him to his own room to get settled for the night.

Kate tucked Belle under a plain red and blue striped duvet on the futon bed and closed the light.


	27. Belle In the Dark

Belle whimpered softly in the dark. She was afraid. There was no nightlight in the room. Everything was dark dark dark. The pillow was too high and the duvet was too thick. She realized she hadn't had a glass of water before bed like her father always brought her. Her throat felt dry dry dry.

She wondered what her dad was doing right now. She wasn't used to going without her dad giving her a hug and a kiss on the forehead or her mum tucking her in and reading to her on Skype before bed. She wondered if her mum would ever tuck her in again.

Part of her was super excited about her mum getting new lungs because it meant that she might come home again soon and tuck her in every night again for real with real hugs and kisses she could actually feel, but another part of her was very scared that maybe her mum would never tuck her in again. At least seeing her on the computer every night was better than not seeing her at all. Belle couldn't imagine what she would do if her mum went away forever. She loved her dad, but her mum was her mum.

She wished she could have talked to her mum before she had her operation to get her to tell her she would be okay and that there was nothing to worry about. Her mum always had a way of calming her down. But they needed to put the lungs in quickly as soon as they were available and get her mum prepped for surgery right away. Belle thought of all the things she still wanted to ask her mum like why was the sky blue and what age were girls when they got boobies and was it the same age for everyone? Belle was curious about everything and her mum knew lots and lots of stuff and always had time for her questions. Not like other people, who maybe cared for her, but would brush things away as silly or say they didn't have the time.

She heard the sound of Chris and Kate saying goodnight and I love you to Rumple. She heard them close his door and the sound of the two women walking down the hall, then the squeak of their footsteps on the creaky stairs.

She didn't hear Rumple. Maybe he was asleep now. Maybe once his mums were done tucking him he'd come to check on her, to see if she was alright? She waited hoping that Rumple would come. Then she realized she was being stupid. Even if he wanted to, he said he had to have his leg elevated for a day or two, he wasn't supposed to get out of bed on his own if he could help it.

That mean that Belle was on her own.

The whole house was quiet, except for the light murmur of the TV downstairs that she could barely hear. There was a clock on the wall she realized now, and it was ticking loudly. It sounded like a bomb about to go off that you would see on a cartoon show. She wondered if it was a bomb. Maybe somebody had put a bomb in Chris and Kate's guest room. Was it possible? Her dad said some people said bad things about Chris and Kate behind their backs because they were women who got married to each other and some people were silly about stuff like that, getting all offended when it wasn't their business. Maybe the silly people put a bomb in the house and it was making that ticking noise. There was a window near the bed that Belle could see out of. Could they have come in through there?

Maybe robbers would come in through there. There had been robbers at her old house once, when she'd gone with her parents on vacation and they came back to find the windows broken and the TV taken. She grew frightened and clutched the plain duvet cover tightly in her hands. She wondered if it was close enough to the ground for robbers to put a ladder to.

She peeped up over the duvet to check and happened to glance at the chair by Kate's special tilty desk. There was a lumpy shadowy shape there. It looked a bit like a blob monster. Belle stared at it. Was it just her or did the blob seem to be getting bigger. Was it growing? What if she closed her eyes and the blob got bigger and bigger when ever she wasn't looking at it and then it sneaked across the floor and gobbled her up when she was sleeping. She knew it could happen. She'd seen a video at the science museum of an amoeba gobbling up a small paramecium like that, by engulfing it in its blobby body. How big could amoebas get? Big enough to engulf a small girl?

Belle felt very scared. She wanted to call out and scream, but then Kate and Chris would come and she didn't want them. They were nice and they were grown ups, but they didn't understand how things were with her, not like Rumple or her Mum and Dad. Plus her father had told her to be on the best behavior with them. What if they called him when he was in the operation place with her mum interrupting her mum's operation? The doctors couldn't get distracted he'd told her, that's why she wasn't allowed to be there.

Belle curled into a ball and pulled the covers over her head, hoping the evil amoeba robbers wouldn't see her.

Be inside, with her head under the covers and no light from the hall outside or the streetlights outside the window shining through everything was dark dark dark.

And Belle was very very frightened.


	28. Starman

Suddenly, she was consumed with purpose. She had to get out of the room and get to Rumple. His room was safer, more familiar. She played there with him all the time and Rumple wouldn't be scared. Rumple was super brave. If anyone could protect her from giant amoeba robber monsters, thought Belle, it was Rumple.

The only thing was, she would have to get out of bed and step down on the floor and go into the dark hallway and then into his room to get to him. Belle trembled under the striped duvet. She wasn't sure if she had the courage. What if there were scary creatures, like alligators hiding under the bed ready to snap her up as soon as she stepped out onto the ground. Suddenly, the strange bed felt like an island of safety in a scary sea of darkness. Her breath came rapidly to her, in short panting gasps. The clock kept ticking like there was a bomb in the room.

Belle didn't want to get exploded, so she slipped out of the bed and as fast as she could opened the door and darted down the shadowy hallway to Rumple's room. It took only half a minute to get there, but it had taken her nearly fifteen just to get up the courage to make the move. Quickly she twisted the doorknob. The door gave with a scary spooky sounding creak and Belle opened it just a touch and darted in.

Inside Rumple's room, she didn't feel half so scared. There was a soft yellow glow coming from an illuminated egg shaped clock on his nightstand and as Belle watched, it changed colours to orange and then to red and purple and blue. Belle watched the slowly changing light and began to feeling a little calmer.

Belle approached Rumple's bed. The floor creaked a bit, but he didn't wake up. She thought she would just slip under his covers and climb into the bed with him without waking him up, like she did with her Dad sometimes when she had a bad dream. Then she noticed Rumple's bed had a railing up to prevent him from falling out on one side and on the other side there was the wall. There was no way she could just slip in without waking him up.

How did he ever manage to get out on his own? The headboard was against the wall on the corner, so she couldn't get in that way. Only the foot of the bed was free.

Ah, she figured he probably scooted down the bed and got out that way. She approached the end of the bed and noticed Rumple's crutches propped up against the wall there, catching the light, further proving her hypothesis. If he could get out that way, then couldn't she get in?

Belle climbed up on the end of the bed being careful not to knock the crutches over so they didn't make a clattery sound on the floor that would wake him up.

Then she edged her way up the bed until she got to Rumple's feet. Still, he didn't wake up. His hurt leg in its cast stuck out from under the covers, resting on a pillow. Belle wonder how he could sleep like that. She always slept on her belly and could never fall asleep on her back. She supposed he just got used to it because he had to.

She looked closely and was surprised to see he had little toes just like hers, sticking out of the top of the plaster. She'd always wondered about that, because she'd never seen him without socks, even if one was a grown up sock and one was a kid sock. Suddenly, she wondered what they felt like, they were so cute and small, just like Rumple himself. She didn't want to hurt him, but maybe if she just touched them softly to see what they felt like, if they felt the same way hers did.

Rumple was sleeping and dreaming again. This time it wasn't a scary dream, just a little odd. He was with Mummy Chris and Mummy Kate and they were at Uncle David and Aunt Margaret's cottage like they went to once when he'd first came to live with Chris and Kate. He had his feet in the water and Kate was telling him to stay very very still and they were watching as the tiny brown minnows came right up to his toes and started nibbling at them, tickling them.

"Silly fish," Rumple said in his sleep. He tried to brush the minnows away when suddenly his hand connected with something.

"Ow!" said Belle.

Rumple was instantly awake, sitting up in bed, noticing Belle sitting at the end of it, wearing a guilty expression.

"Belle?"

"Rumple, hey, uh, hi, are you okay? I didn't hurt you did I?" she asked worriedly.

"No," said, Rumple confused. "How come you're not in your bed?"

Suddenly, Belle remembered the monsters under the bed and the scary amoeba again and felt frightened.

"I'm-I'm s-s-scared, Rumple."

"How come?"

"My room is dark. I think there're monsters in it. Amoebas in my closet!" said Belle nervously.

"What's amoebas?"

"I think the amoebas want to eat me!" cried Belle.

Rumple looked at Belle. He usually wasn't aware of their age difference, Belle was so intelligent and well read. She spoke like someone far older than her actual age. As Rumple had missed out on some basic education other kids his age usually had, he knew he was roughly around her speed intellectually, but there were times when he was vividly reminded of how much younger she was than him, two years younger in fact, and at the age they both were at, two years can mean a lot. She was still terrified of monsters under her bed and imaginary creatures in her closet.

It wasn't that Rumple wasn't afraid of things. Oh, he had plenty of fear in him to be sure, only he wasn't afraid of little kid things like monsters in the closet or creatures under the bed. The things he was afraid of were things grown-ups couldn't just shoo away or say "oh it's just your imagination" about. Which didn't make Belle's fears any less scary. He just wished the things he worried about could disappear by turning on a light or just snuggling up with someone else. Sometimes he envied her.

"I miss my Mum," Belle sniffed, as she wrapped her little arms around Rumple's narrow chest and cried into the shoulder of his pajamas.

Not really knowing what to do, Rumple just held her and softly rubbed her back like his mums did for him when he had bad dreams.

"I know, I know" he said, because he couldn't think of anything better to say. He felt a little guilty then. Belle did have real problems, not just kid worries about monsters in the closet. "Come on Belle, it's okay. You can stay here with me and sleep in my bed."

"Okay," said Belle gratefully, and put her head on the big pillow next to Rumple. She played idly with his hair making little braids. "You have pretty hair," she said.

"Yeah, I guess," he said not sure how he felt about braids. He noticed Belle was still shivering. "Get under the blanket, you'll be warmer," he advised her.

"I like your glowy light thingy, but it's still really dark in here," said Belle as she pulled Rumple's duvet up around her trembling shoulders. "Can we turn on the light?"

"I can't, but you can," said Rumple, pointing to the light switch by the doorway, which Belle could just faintly see by the glow of his egg lamp. "It's just over there."

Belle looked wistfully at the light switch, so far away across the possibly shadow-snake filled floor, and wriggled further down under Rumple's duvet. "I can't," said Belle, embarrassed for being so afraid. "It's dark, I'm sorry."

"Hey, it's okay," said Rumple, putting an arm around her. "You don't have to be afraid of the dark anymore."

"How come?"

"Because—because—because" Rumple faltered for a second, and then inspiration struck. "Because, remember our game that we played downstairs?"

"With the Playmobil dark castle?"

"Uh-huh. And remember, I'm the sorcerer of the dark castle in the game right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Yes, I'm the sorcerer of the dark castle, and all the shadows must obey my command. They call me the Dark One and all the darkness of the night must obey me! Wooo wooo!" He made some motions with his hands like he was bringing the darkness in and pushing it out. "See? Darkness of the night I command thee! Leave Belle alone! She is my friend so you have to obey her too and not bother her, okay?" He cocked his head and acted like he was listening. "Oh, okay," Rumple prompted Belle, "you have the attention of the darkness and shadows, tell them to leave you alone okay?"

"Um, night-time dark and shadows, please leave me alone?" squeaked Belle, poking her head up from over the duvet. Then she waited. "Psst, Rumple," she said after a second, "you think it worked?"

Rumple gave her a solemn nod. "Well done Belle, I think it did. It's okay, you can come out, there's nothing to be scared of, I used my magic."

Belle's entire face slowly emerged from beneath the covers with a timid smile. "Thanks Rumple."

"No problem. Hey," he said pointing up at the ceiling. "Did you see my stars?"

Belle looked up at the ceiling where Rumple was pointing, and to her amazement there were indeed stars there, blue and white and pink and orange glow-in-the-dark ones stuck up above their heads. "Cool!" she breathed.

Rumple grinned and gave her hand a squeeze beneath the duvet.

For a while they were quiet, holding hands, looking up at Rumple's stars. Belle heard Rumple's breathing start to get into a slower, sleepier rhythm.

Belle gnawed on her lip. She didn't want Rumple to fall asleep, not yet. She was still scared and worried. "Do you think my Mum will ever come home?" she asked him.

Turning gingerly on his hip towards her Rumple looked her in the eyes. "I wish I could tell you yes," he said in all seriousness. "But I honestly don't know. What do you think?"

"I don't know either."

"Do you want her to come back?"

"YES!" Belle nodded vigorously staring up at the glowing plastic stars as they blurred before her teary eyes. "Very very very much!" She squeezed Rumple's hand as tightly as she could as if that could make her desire come true.

"Sometimes," said Rumple thoughtfully, "When I want something very very much, I look at the stars and make a wish."

"And does it work? Does your wish come true?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes."

"Like, what was the last thing you wished for?"

"Oh, uh, I wished that I wouldn't have a cast."

Belle looked down the bed at his foot in its cast sitting on the pillow. "Well, it sort of worked," she said optimistically. "You did have a week without one, before this happened."

"I guess that's one way of looking at it," said Rumple favouring her with a small twist of a smile in the dark.

"Did you wish for anything else?" she asked.

Rumple fought off the lump in his throat. He had wished for something, or rather someone else. He said nothing.

"Astrid?" guessed Belle, when Rumple went quiet.

Rumple nodded glumly. "I don't think it worked."

"Well, maybe it's just taking a long time," said Belle hopefully.

"Maybe," said Rumple. When Belle said it it almost seemed possible. He smiled a little. "She used to sing me this song, Astrid did, to help me go to sleep."

"Yeah? How did it go?"

Rumple thought a bit about it and started to hum. He closed his eyes trying to remember the words. Something about a star? A man? A starman. Oh, that was it.

Then in a high, piping voice he sang to Belle, "There's a Starman waiting in the sky  
He'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds…"

Chris walked passed Rumple's door on her way to the bedroom to get changed. She paused, looking through the crack in the door as she always did, just to peek in on Rumple, and make sure he was all right.

A high little child's voice floated out towards her singing a David Bowie song. She didn't think she'd ever heard him sing before, though Kate had mentioned him singing Ziggy Stardust for her once. She wondered if he was dreaming and singing in his sleep. Or maybe Belle was in there. Maybe he was singing to her. She was about to go in and interrupt him, to see if Belle was with him, to check if she was alright, but something stopped her just as her hand touched the doorframe. It was Rumple's voice, his little voice quavering with emotion as he sang the song. There was something so intense about it, as if he had poured his whole tiny vulnerable being into the words, like it was a private prayer. She just couldn't walk on in on that, she knew, without making him feel self-conscious.

She walked on towards her bedroom shaking her head. It was the oddest thing, yet somehow so completely and wonderfully Rumple.


	29. Tattoo Parlor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle and Rumple have fun drawing on his cast with an eager Kate and a somewhat hesitant Chris.

"Where's Belle?" asked Kate. She checked her work room in the next morning only to find the little girl was gone.

"I'll bet she's in Rumple room," said Chris and told Kate all about hearing Rumple singing through the door the night before.

"Aaawww, that's so sweet."

Kate gently nudged open the door to Rumple's room and peeked inside with Chris looking over her shoulder.

Rumple was in the same position he'd been in when they'd tucked him in, his foot propped up on the pillow, a little bit of sleepy drool collecting in the corner of his mouth. The only difference they saw, as they gently pushed the door further open, was the smaller form of Belle, cuddled up in a ball beside him under the covers, one arm draped possessively over Rumple's narrow little chest.

Unable to resist Kate snapped a picture on her phone.

Rumple gave a little start at the sound of the click and his eyes fluttered opened. Careful not to wake Belle, Chris gently lifted Rumple up from the bed and took him to the bathroom.

An hour later, Belle woke up to the sound of cartoons playing on the TV downstairs and the smell coffee brewing. Hearing her footsteps on the stairs, Rumple waved at her from the couch. He was sitting up with his foot propped on the coffee table watching cartoons. There was a TV tray by his side with the half eaten remains of French toast still visible.

"There's more French toast in the kitchen. It was my choice," he said importantly. "I said because Belle French is our guest, we must have French toast!"

"Thanks!" Belle smiled at Rumple whom she'd never seen in the morning. He was still in his pajamas, his hair tangled up in a little brown cloud around his head. He had a maple syrup moustache.

"C'mon, get some in the kitchen," he suggested.

Belle's stomach was growling. She was indeed hungry.

Kate and Chris helped her out with a plate in the kitchen and helped her take it out to the TV tray to put beside Rumple's so she could sit with him.

"Don't we have school today?" asked Belle. She knew Rumple might have had to stay home because of his hurt leg, but her dad would be upset if he found out she'd missed school for no reason.

"It's Saturday, silly!" laughed Rumple. "And since I can't really go anywhere, we get to watch all the cartoons and play all the video games and do all the arts and crafts and video games and board games and Lego builds and cooking projects we want!"

Belle's eyes went wide. She'd started out the morning waking up alone and scared in bed, worried about her mum. The possibility of having fun on this day of all days had not occurred to her. "Can we really do all those things?"

"Absolutely!" said Rumple, vigorously nodding his head. "My mums said so! You don't even have to help clean the dishes or make your bed or anything!"

"How come?"

"'Cause you're our special guest!"

"I'm not really a special guest," said Belle blushing. "I come here all the time."

"Yes you are," disagreed Rumple, "see, even the cutlery agree!" He picked up his knife and fork and in an even higher pitched voice than his natural one ,began singing "Be Our Guest" as he made them dance around with his hands on the TV tray.

Belle nearly fell over laughing. Forgetting the rest of the song in his merriment, Rumple continued dancing his knife and fork across the TV tray making them jump off the tray and dancing them on Belle's shoulders.

"Rumple, what are you doing!" scolded Chris trying not to laugh. "You're going to get maple syrup all over Belle's pajamas!"

"He's Lumiere, the candlestick guy!" said Belle.

Rumple beamed, fork and knife in hand as he danced them some more across his lap and perilously over the white couch, until finally, Chris took the sticky utensils into the kitchen to wash them, before she had a conniption. Belle settled in quietly next to Rumple to eat her breakfast and watch Pinky and the Brain.

When the half hour episode was done, Kate came down from upstairs where she'd been rummaging in her desk for precisely the right artistic implements.

"Hey Rum," she said, leaning against the door jam, "that cast looks kinda plain. What do you think?" She expertly fanned out a dozen artist quality permanent coloured Copic markers like a card shark dealing a hand.

"Yes! Yes! Yes!" cried Belle and Rumple. Soon Belle was at Kate's feet jumping up trying to reach for the markers and Rumple was bouncing like crazy on the couch.

Chris entered with apple juice boxes for the kids, only to see Kate flourishing the markers like a dozen multi-coloured magic wands. "Oh no, Kate, you didn't! Not the… permanent markers!"

"Well, we can't use Rum's washable crayola's for working on this," Kate explained reasonably. "They'll come right off in a day or too and the marks won't be dark enough. I'm a professional Chris, if I don't use quality tools the work is effected. You don't expect me to allow our son to walk around with shoddy artwork on his cast. Think how that reflects on me, you know, as a professional."

"You I trust," said Chris, and Kate grinned. "Just barely, mind you," she added and Kate gave an exaggerated frown, "to keep this couch and the kids clean, but you can't expect Belle and Rumple not to get covered in marker. How am I going to explain it to Maurice if she comes home with all her nice pajamas ruined?"

"Hmmmm," Kate frowned. "Ah! I have just the thing."

Ten minutes later Kate had Belle and Rumple wrapped entirely in bizarre suits made of sheets of Saran Wrap tapped in place around their little bodies with long lengths of scotch tape. Just the process of entirely suiting up the children in saran wrap had been exciting enough and despite Chris's complaints, well worth it in the end for the delighted to look in the children's eyes.

"We're astronauts!" cheered Belle running around the room.

"Ground control to Major Tom!" shouted Rumple excitedly bouncing on his bum.

"Calm down you guys," said Kate when the children were at last covered entirely in saran wrap, except for their hands, feet, faces and Rumple's injured leg in its bright yellow cast.

"All right," said Kate as if she was a general talking to her troops. "Now let's hear suggestions. It's Rumple's leg, so he gets ultimate pick, but lets look at all our options before you decide, okay Rum?"

Rumple nodded seriously. Whatever he chose now he'd have to put up for a month at least.

"Chris, you're first in line. What are your thoughts?"

Chris, who didn't expect to be picked first, said the first thing that came to mind. "Um, our names?"

Rumple gave Mummy Chris a kindly pat on the hand. Really, imagination wasn't her strong suit, but she tried her best. "It's all right, dearie," he said in imitation of what Mrs. Lucas, the grandmotherly kindergarten teacher at school, would say when one of the kids didn't feel like saying anything in circle time, "we'll get back to you."

Kate spluttered out laughing. Chris blushed scarlet trying hard not to laugh herself, even if she was embarrassed, though Rumple and Belle had no idea what was so funny.

"All right, Belle," said Kate when she'd finally recovered her composure. "What do you think?"

"My Little Ponies!" said Belle with a firm nod. She'd given this a lot of thought.

Rumple, though he liked My Little Pony well enough on his own, nixed the idea, mainly because he didn't want any of the boys in the class making fun of him for liking a girls' show. Besides, he really wanted to hear what Mummy Kate had to say and then say his own idea of course. He had a seriously awesome one.

"My idea," said Kate, now that it was her turn, "is to do a schoolbus."

"Why would I want a schoolbus?" asked Rumple. "I don't go to school in a schoolbus."

"But see? We could put the black and stripes along the sides and headlights in the front and wheels near the bottom. Your whole foot could be a school bus and it would look really cool! Your cast is yellow already so the colour would match perfectly."

"I don't know," said Rumple sceptically.

"It'll look really cool I promise!" said Kate, all eagerness.

Chris rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Kate, you're as bad as the kids. Why don't you let Rumple tell you what he wants."

"Sorry, I get carried away sometimes. Tell me, Rumple, what do you want?"

Rumple had thought about this long and hard. He knew exactly what he wanted. "My five favourite cartoon characters," he said determinedly. "The fox Robin Hood, from Disney Robin Hood, that's one. Pinky and the Brain from Pinky and the Brain."

"That's three in total," said Belle, remembering her number games with her dad.

"Batman from Batman," continued Rumple, "and Belle from Beauty and the Beast."

"Belle?" asked Belle, remarkably touched.

"Belle," insisted Rumple.

"Alrighty then," said Kate rubbing her hands together. "Seems we've got it settled. Belle and Chris I'm doing the outlines in pencil first, then black marker outlines and then you can fill in the colours, okay?"

"Yes sir!" said Belle determinedly.

"Rumple, you're the director, it's up to you to make sure we're doing it right, okay?"

"Aye aye Captain Kate!" said Rumple with a proper salute.

Kate beamed back at him. She'd always secretly wanted to be a sea captain for some reason.

"Aye, aye captain?" asked Chris wryly, "You're just eating this up aren't you?"

"Quiet you," Kate admonished her partner, laughing. "Now who wants to play tattoo parlour?"

"Tattoo parlour!" exclaimed Chris. "We are not playing tattoo parlour! Not what we want to encourage Rumple, here to do, is it?"

"Oh c'mon Chris, lighten up."

"Please," said Rumple giving her the big puppy dog eyes. "You can be the woman who comes around with the antibacterial wipes, if you want!"

"Rumple how do you even know about that? Gah! Forget I asked. Fine!" Chris wagged a finger at Kate. "But if he shows up for a job interview someday, inked up with a tear drop by his eye and spiderwebs up his neck I wash my hands of any responsibility are we clear?"

"You got it boss!" said Kate and uncapped the first marker.


	30. Tattoo Parlor Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belle covers herself with marker.

By the end of playing tattoo parlour Rumple had all his desired cartoons and they looked really really good, he had to say, like drawings out of a book in fact.

It wasn't just Kate bragging, Chris had to admit. She was a consummate professional. Belle of course, quickly got bored with colouring in the lines of Rumple's cast, which was fibreglass and bumpy to work on for a nonprofessional. Chris supplied her with some paper for making her own drawings, but that quickly got dull as well. What Belle really wanted was drawings on herself, just like Rumple.

She pulled off the saran wrap and pulled up her pajama pants up to her knees while Kate was busy working on Rumple and Rumple was busy looking at what Kate was doing and Chris was in the kitchen washing up. Belle studied her own legs. Rumple, with his cast had a wider space to draw on, but Belle, feeling her own skin, realized it was realized was perfectly smooth and easier to draw on. She thought about what she would want if she could have pictures on her legs too. She tried to draw Ariel from the Little Mermaid nice and small, but the tail was hard to draw and soon it went up to her knee, with the mermaid's bright red hair on her foot. She liked the tea cup family from Beauty and the Beast so she tried to draw those on her other leg, but they ended up looking more like blobs with handles and less like teacups and she rubbed them accidentally and the whole bunch smeared into a big blurry blue mess. Unhappy with this piece she tried again, drawing the teacup family on her left arm, this time doing a much better job she thought. But by the time she'd added, Chip the baby cup and a few candlesticks and dancing forks for good measure, Rumple had noticed.

"Hey Mummy Kate! Look what Belle's doing! She's getting tattoos too!"

Kate whirled around just in time to see Belle writing the letters of her name "B-E-L-L-E" right across her knuckles in blue like she'd seen a man at the convenience store had, though his said "L-O-V-E" and "H-A-T-E" instead.

"Holy sh—" began Kate. "I mean Sh-shugar!" she amended, realizing quickly that little ears were listening. "Oh man, Maurice is going to kill us."

In the end Rumple solemnly promised to be extra good and stay on the sofa, as Kate and Chris took Belle to the bathroom and tried to scrub all the permenant marker done with high quality artist calibre three- five dollar each copic markers off her arms and legs and nose (it had somehow landed there after she tried to wipe it with one marker covered finger). At least her clothing had been spared by the judicious application of Seran wrap. Although the pictures faded as Chris and Kate scrubbed at them, Belle's arms and legs were now covered in skin tinged in slightly unnatural hues blue, green, orange, pink, purple and grey.

"Great! Now it just looks like she's been beaten black and blue!" cried Chris.

"No! There's purple too!" said Belle helpfully.

"Scrub harder!" directed Kate.

"This wasn't my idea!" complained Chris.

"I need to go to the bathroom!" called Rumple from down the hall.

"Gah!"

"C'mon Chris, it wouldn't kill him to walk on his cast just a little."

"The doctor said he had to keep it elevated for two days, no weight bearing for weeks. I told you!"

"Sorry, it's just—"

"Mummy Kaaatttte! Mummy Chriiiiiissss!" called Rumple frantically. "I'm going to go on my own, okay?"

"No! You stay put! I'm coming!" called Kate, wiping her soapy hands on a towel as Chris continued scrubbing Belle.

"Don't worry I'll finish up," said Chris.

"It tickles!" laughed Belle.

Kate picked Rumple up just as he was getting off the couch. "What did I say?"

"I can go there myself!" Rumple whined. "I'm not a baby!"

"I know it's hard for you sweetie, but it's just one more day. Then you can get your crutches and go on your own, okay? Now hold onto my neck."

"Oh yay," muttered Rumple sarcastically as he put his arms around Kate's neck. Kate groaned, he was definitely starting to get heavier.

Suddenly, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She heard that distinctive ring. Even Rumple knew it.

"Maurice!" Rumple gasped.

Kate put Rumple down on the bench in the hallway and picked up the phone.


	31. Kate Picks up the Phone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maurice calls about Rose, Belle's mum.

"Hello?" asked Kate uncertainly, her heart in her throat.

"Kate?"

"Maurice? How is she?"

"She's okay," he gasped out like a man who had just climbed a mountain and lay panting for breath on the summit. "She made it through the surgery."

Kate's eyes teared up. "Oh, oh, that's wonderful!"

She looked at Rumple who was staring at her wide eyed and she gave him a thumbs up. He grinned from ear to ear.

"Can I talk to Belle?"

"Oh yes, yes of course!" said Kate. "She's just upstairs."

"Stay right here and be a good boy, okay Rumple?" Kate said to Rumple.

He nodded. "Is Belle's Mummy going to be alright?" he asked.

"Sssh, Rumple I have to take the phone to Belle," said Kate.

Then Kate tuned into Maurice. He was still talking, babbling everything he'd just learned.

 

"The doctors said Rose's new lungs are functioning. She's breathing on her own, but she's still getting a little oxygen to help her out. She still has a lot drains and tubes in her body to remove excess fluid from the surgery and she's in the ICU. They said if all goes well she could be out in a few days and in a regular room. I can probably take Belle to visit her tomorrow if things continue okay. We're not out of the woods yet, the next few days are really critical. They said there can be rejection, and they're giving her immunosuppressing drugs intravenously. But the important thing is she pulled through, and she's getting stronger. If things really go well, she could be out in as little as two weeks," he said hopefully.

"Oh Maurice, that's wonderful!"

"Yes," he said, hope and pride suffusing his voice. "I know. Rose is a fighter. She's always defied the odds."

"Belle!" Kate called out to the little girl as she emerged from the bathroom, clean and scrubbed. "Your dad is on the phone."

Belle practically tore the phone out of Kate's hand she was so eager to hear from her dad.

She held the hot little object up to her ear, her little hands sweating with worry.

"It's alright, baby," said her father. "So far your mum made it through."


	32. A Toast to Rumple

When Maurice came back he took them out for Chinese food to celebrate Rose's survival of the operation.

Even though Rumple's leg was still on full rest and elevation, they managed to put him sideways into the booth in the restaurant with a little pillow under it to keep it elevated. Of course he ended up eating sideways then too and getting noodles all down his lap and shirt as a result, but it was worth it.

Chris couldn't remember ever seeing Maurice so animated. She'd never actually seen him look happy before, she thought. Yet now, the relief on his face was palpable and little Belle was so excited she spilled her green tea just trying to drink it. Nobody cared. Nothing could spoil the mood of love and joy at their table.

In a way, Kate thought, Maurice, Belle and even Rose, though they had never met her in person, had become like family to them. Maurice and Belle's joy was their joy and she could see how Maurice's eyes softened when he looked at little Rumple and gently helped him with his noodles like he was his own little boy.

"Tomorrow, I'm going to see my Mum," Belle confided excitedly to Rumple.

"Oh, that's cool," he said, although secretly, he wished she could spend the whole day with him again. He knew how boring it would get, having to keep his leg elevated, not doing anything. There was only so much reading and TV watching a person could do without getting bored. Kate and Chris might play with him a bit, but it wasn't the same as having Belle around. She always had the best story ideas for the Dark Castle.

Somehow Belle knew what Rumple was thinking and gripped his little hand. "Don't worry, we'll be together again on Monday at school. You are coming, right?"

Rumple looked at Kate and Chris. "Am I going to school on Monday?"

"Well," said Chris, "let's see how your leg is then. If it's not giving you any trouble, I don't see why you can't go on crutches. You've already missed enough. What do you think Kate?"

"The doc said it would be okay, if it wasn't hurting him."

Rumple smiled. He could go one day without seeing Belle, even if it was a super boring one.

As dinner was winding down, Maurice tapped on the side of his teacup with a chopstick. "I'd like to propose a toast! To Kate and Chris, who opened their lives and the hearts to me and my daughter, who welcomed us to this strange city where we knew no one and made us feel at home, who helped our family stay strong and together through this tough, tough time. Someday I hope me and Rose and Belle can repay your kindness, but I doubt we will ever be able to return it all in full, there has just been too much. All I can say is how grateful I truly am, and if Rose was here at the table with us, and I know one day soon she will be, I know she would be saying the same thing," he said wiping away a tear. "Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts."

Chris and Kate wiped away tears of their own and Maurice's moving speech, while Belle tugged at his sleeve. "And Rumple," she whispered, "and Rumple."

"Oh and of course how could I forget Rumple here?" he said turning to the small boy who was looking up at him in surprise at being mentioned, a noodle still hanging out of his mouth.

"All this started, all these people at this table coming together as friends, it all started with you—you becoming Belle's friend that first time at school, giving someone new a chance, being there for her so she wouldn't be alone. You are a fine, fine young man," said Maurice, raising his cup of tea. "And I am pleased to think of you as my honourary son. No son of mine or big brother to Belle could have ever possibly helped and comforted her more through this terrible time than you have, even when you had plenty of challenges of your own to deal with. Your mums should be so very very proud of you Rumple."

"Here, here!" cheered Chris and Kate and Belle.

Rumple looked up at Maurice's kindly weathered face and felt a bloom of warmth and joy spread through his belly. He smiled and smiled, his face beaming like a sun. Maurice, a man completed unrelated to him, actually wanted him as his honorary son. He said he was helpful.

It was bizarre Maurice saying he thought of him that way, when Rumple considered that just over a year ago his own real father hadn't even wanted him as his real son, even though he actually was. He remembered Malcolm telling him he was useless, hopeless, because he could never walk properly and thinking his dad was right, that it was true, that he was really of no use to anyone.

Even with Astrid, who told him he helped her, he hadn't thought his father's estimation of his usefulness was untrue exactly. And Kate and Chris, much as he knew they loved him, had always had to take care of him with all the surgeries he'd been through. It was hard to feel terribly useful when someone had to help him to the bathroom just because he had to be extra careful with his leg while it took its sweet time healing. Even if his mums had explained that it wasn't his fault and didn't mean anything, it still made him feel embarrassed and babyish.

But Maurice said he'd helped Belle and he could see, from Maurice's face that he really did mean it. He believed Rumple had helped. He'd said Rumple was the opposite of useless, even if he couldn't walk properly. He was—

"You're awesome," said Belle breaking into his thoughts. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "In my imagination you really are my brother," she said, "because I love you."

She reached out and gave Rumple a big hug.

"And I know, when my Mum meets you she's gonna love you too."

"Do you think that will happen?" he asked surprised. "That I'll meet your Mum?"

"For sure," said Belle. "She said so herself, that when's she better, the first person she wants to meet is you."

"Awesome," breathed Rumple.

"Of course," said Belle, looking down at her plate, feeling slightly guilty, "I did kind of, um, tell her you were a dragon rider."

"A what?" asked Rumple, bewildered.

"And maybe that you were three hundred years old and came from Neverland."

"Oh, heh," said Rumple nervously, not quite sure how he could never live up to any of that. "Great."


	33. Belle calls on Sunday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumple has a frustrating Sunday without Belle.

Sunday was just as boring as Rumple expected. He was itching to get up and go on his swing or just walk around the room or run out and play, but he had to stay put. In addition to that he was just plain itching as well.

The padding inside the cast was irritating his skin. He scratched the outside of the cast trying to get at it, but it didn't help any. It wasn't the first time this had happened, but without much to distract him, it was driving him insane.

Finally, Kate and Chris relented and let him go about with his crutches a little in the backyard just to get some of his energy out, but then he had to muck it all up by half tripping on the uneven grassy ground. Chris caught him before he fell down, but then it was back to the couch all over again. He never thought he'd get so sick of TV and video games, but there it was.

The best part of the day was when Belle called him, even if she hadn't sounded so great on the phone.

"I thought my Mummy would look all better, you know?" said Belle wistfully over the line. "I thought after she got new lungs she'd be healthy again right away, but it's not really like that."

"Oh?" Rumple was surprised. He'd thought the same thing as Belle.

"Dad says it's going to take a long, long time for her to really get better. Even when she comes home and if everything's okay she's going to have to go back to the hospital all the time for check ups and to make sure the lungs are working and she's not getting sick from weird infections and stuff."

"Oh," said Rumple.

"She still has all these weird wires in her and tubes and stuff, even in her mouth. It's scary and she still can't barely talk much."

"But your Dad says she's going to get better right?"

"Uh-huh. She didn't reject the transplant or anything."

"Well, she had a big operation right?"

"Yeah."

"I once had a big operation, you know?"

"On your leg?"

"Yeah, and they had to put drains and stuff in there and metal things that stuck out and all sorts of yucky stuff."

"Weren't you scared?"

"Yeah and frustrated too, but Mummy Chris and Mummy Kate told me I would get better, it was just going to take a long time. And it's, you know, it is taking a long time and stuff happens and I get so mad, and I wish I could just wave a wand or something and it would get better in one second, but it doesn't work that way."

"Yeah."

"So it's probably like that with her too. Stuff always takes longer than you think it will."

"Yeah."

"Don't be sad Belle and don't give up."

He could hear the smile in her voice. "I won't Rumple! Thanks!"


	34. Rumple on Monday

The problem, Rumple realized, as he got ready for school Monday morning, is that it's really easy to give other people great advice, but really hard to take it for yourself.

When was it ever going to end?

He was wearing sweatpants. Again. One big grown-up sock over his cast foot and one little boy sock on his regular foot. Again. Mummy Chris had gone off to work and Mummy Kate had put his crutches over the top of the stroller and was encouraging him to get inside. Again.

He'd had enough.

"No," growled Rumple. "I am not going to school in a stroller like a baby! I am seven years old!"

Kate ran a hand through her hand. It hadn't been the easiest morning. Just getting him to wear sweatpants had been hard enough. "Okay, then Rum, how do you want to get to school? In case you haven't noticed Chris took our only car to work and you're not walking there like that. What choice do we have?"

"Crutches," said Rumple stubbornly.

"But you almost fell yesterday and that was just a few steps! I can't be taking you back to the hospital again so soon."

"It was because of the grass! It was all bumpy. I'll be fine on the sidewalk. Yesterday was just stupid."

"Sweetie, I know you're great with using your crutches, but the school is seven blocks away. You think you can make it all the way there like that? You're going to get too tired."

"No I won't!"

"All right, look we'll try it okay? You go on your crutches, but I'll bring the stroller just in case you get tired."

"I won't get tired."

"Fine you won't get tired," said Kate, putting his crutches under his arms, where he could get his hands on the grips. "There you go."

"Thanks," he said stiffly. Then off they went.

After two blocks of swinging himself along, Rumple was already starting to feel tired, but he was absolutely not going in the stroller, no way jose. He wouldn't even look at it.

By the third block Kate was asking him if he wanted go in it.

"No!" he shouted at her, and kept on going, hopping along faster for a bit just to prove he wasn't tired. "No stroller!"

Kate had to give it to Rumple, the boy was stubborn. She could see how exhausted he was getting by the time the school was just over the horizon. She was worried he would stumble and fall down, but he kept going and she stopped nagging him about going in the stroller. She wasn't sure why, but for some reason doing this was incredibly important to him and she was willing to let him try. She just hoped he didn't stumble and wasn't too wiped out for the rest of the day to do any learning.

At last they made it to the playground. Kate hoped Rumple would get a chance to sit on a bench or something and cool down for a bit, as he was sweating profusely now. Unfortunately, it had taken them so long to get there that the indoor bell was already ringing and the other kids were lined up and trooping inside. "Next time," said Kate, feeling like an idiot for not having thought of it sooner, "why don't we do the stroller for the first six blocks and then the last one you can do on your own okay? That way you won't have to worry about other kids seeing? How about it? This way is not good. We're just late and look at you, you're all worn out."

Rumple just nodded mutely. It wasn't the worst suggestion in the world. He was exhausted and his armpits hurt from where the pads of the crutches had bit into them when he leaned on them. The cushioning barely helped at all.

In the end Kate had to sign him in at the desk and he got a late slip. He hopped off tiredly to class with Kate by his side, the stroller parked in the hall. Not that any of his dreaded classmates had even seen him on the way there, she thought bitterly. And it shouldn't have bloody mattered anyway. Who cared if he needed a stroller? Why did it matter so much? She wished he could just get over it. Now she noticed he was making little grunting noises of effort as he went. She could just see him spending the rest of the day in class zonked out on the cushions at the back again and he wasn't even on his pain meds this time. Great.

Kate knocked at the door of the classroom.

Mrs. Varden, opened it. The children behind her were all lined up in a row, carrying towels or small bags with swimming paraphernalia in them.

Shit! thought Kate. She'd completely forgotten. The first day of the swimming unit in PE. Rumple was going to kill her.

Mrs. Varden looked a little dismayed to see Rumple arriving wearing a new cast and propped up on crutches.

Mrs. Varden probably hoped he wouldn't be there today, thought Kate, crestfallen.

"What's this then?" asked Mrs. Varden. "Are you alright Rupert?"

Rumple looked down not wanting to answer, tucking his injured foot instinctively behind him as much as he could, hating being called Rupert because that's what his father used to call him.

"He had a little accident at home," said Kate. "It's just a hairline fracture, but the doctors wanted him in a cast because his bones are still healing from the surgeries and they're still quite weak. His muscles are atrophied so he doesn't have much padding and..." 

Rumple listened to Mummy Kate blah-blahing about his injury and felt his face grow hot and embarrassed. The other kids were staring at him. He glowered down at the floor so he didn't have to see, but he thought he could feel their stares all the same. He hated when his mums talked about it in front of other people, about his bone being weak. It made him feel weird. 

He glanced up at the line of children from his class. They were all shifting around impatiently and playing with their towels and suddenly he clued in to what was going on.

"Mum! They're going swimming!" He tugged at her sleeve. "You said I could do PE for the swim unit! I have my towel in my cubby! Can I go? You said I could go! You said I could go even with my leg!" he exclaimed.

"I know, but that was before you had to get a cast again. You can't go in the water like this, you know that it can't get wet," she explained, feeling exasperated.

"Noooo! I want to go swimming!" he whined. "You said! You said!"

Some of the other children looked over at him. There was whispering. Someone whined, "How come we're not going yet?"

"Rumple, please," said Mummy Kate through gritted teeth. "Let's talk about this later."

"Where's Belle?" Rumple asked, desperately. "Is she going swimming?"

"She's not here today," said Mrs. Varden.

"What?" asked Rumple shocked. "Belle said she was coming! She said!" Belle had promised him she'd be there. What if something was wrong with her Mum? No, no, that would be too terrible! Everything had been so nice at the Chinese restaurant. How could it all go wrong so quickly?

Then, much to his embarrassment, Rumple burst into tears.

Mrs. Varden glared at him with distaste, thinking he was crying about not going swimming. "You'll have to stay here in the office, Rupert," she said coolly. "We don't have enough people to watch you, if you come with the rest of the class to the community pool."

"Uh-oh, Rumple's in trouble," someone whispered down the line of children.

Kate looked up, and the other children all went silent, pretending no one had said anything, tittering slighlty.

In the end it was decided that Rumple would stay in the office with the secretary Beth, with some "fun" worksheets to do, while everyone else went across the street to the community centre to have swimming lesson for PE in the big Olympic sized pool.

Kate hated that Mrs. Varden seemed so relieved she wouldn't have to deal with Rumple when they went swimming. She understood logically, that it probably wasn't anything against her son personally and that it was probably hard enough getting the rest of the 26 kids into swim mode with only one TA for assistance, but she wished the teacher would at least see her little boy as something other than a slow moving nuisance. It wasn't his fault.

She wished school was a place he felt valued and accepted where he could lose some of his shyness. She wished he had a teacher who could look past some of his issues and see how truly kind and intelligent he really was. She couldn't wait until Rumple was in the next grade and out of Mrs. Varden's class, but for now they had to make do.

She walked with Rumple down the hall to the office.

"You said I could go swimming," he sniffed.

"You know you can't, honey. I'm sorry, but your cast will fall apart in the water."

"Good! I hate it!" said Rumple as he stomp-hopped angrily into the office.

Beth, the kindly secretary got him settled down in the sick room at a table with crayons, pencils and the "fun" worksheets Mrs. Varden had given them.

"He'll go back to class after second period, don't worry," said Beth sympathetically to Kate who looked about as miserable as Rumple did now.

Beth bustled about trying to make the room comfortable for him. "Look, we can put this other chair right there and can put your poor little leg up on it to rest it. Doesn't that feel better, darling?" Beth asked Rumple sweetly.

"It's not a poor little leg!" snapped Rumple. "And it doesn't feel better if you put it on a stupid chair! It's shit!"

"Uh, okay then," said Beth awkwardly and swept back into the main office area, not knowing quite how to respond to that.

Kate talked to Rumple about using proper language at school again. She could tell it wasn't the best time for the lecture though and he was losing patience.

"Sweetheart do you want to go home?" she asked him, point blank.

"No. I'm fine," he grumbled.

"Do you want me to stay with you here until your class comes back?"

"No, go away! You lied! You're stupid! You said I could go swimming!"

"All right then," said Kate stiffly. "I'm going to leave."

"Good, go away! I'm fine, " repeated Rumple grumpily.

Kate gave him a gentle kiss on the head. "All right then, but be sure to call if you need me or your leg starts bugging you okay?"

He nodded wearily.

He listened to Mummy Kate telling Beth she could give him one children's Tylenol from a package she gave her, if he complained of his leg hurting and then her leaving.

All he wanted to do was call out to her and say he wanted her to come back to stay with him or to take him home, but he just couldn't, he just couldn't. He had to show her he was angry, that no one lied to him and got away with it.

What was he talking about? Of course they got away with it. Everybody lied to him and everybody got away with it. What exactly could he do? Bop them on the head with a crutch?

He cried silently to himself and turned his face away so stupid Beth wouldn't see and ask about his "poor little leg." He hated his leg. He wished they could take it off and replace it with a super robot leg instead. He would use it to fire rockets at Killian or fly away from school to Belle's house. He missed Belle. She would've stayed with him, he thought. She wouldn't let him be all alone in the office like he was in trouble.

Rumple felt sad for himself.

Half-heartedly, he tried to colour in the picture of the little boy on the paper the teacher had given him. The worksheet was about learning to read the names of the colours, which he had long since mastered, with the help of Kate teaching him back before he'd started going to school. The boy's hat was supposed to be blue. Rumple coloured it blue. The boy's shirt was supposed to be green. Rumple coloured it green. It was all very boring. It took Rumple only a few moments to finish the picture with the correct colours. Now he was even more bored. Using the silver pencil he gave the boy a shiny pair of metallic crutches like his, except without all the stickers which would be too small to draw in. Then he gave him a bright yellow cast that made his one foot twice the size of the other one. Last, but not least he gave the cartoon boy a big frown on his stupid little photocopied face.

Rumple hoped that made stupid Mrs. Varden mad. At least she could've let him come to the community centre. He hated being stuck in the office like he was naughty.

Rumple sighed. He felt exhausted. His arms and good leg hurt from hopping seven blocks on crutches. It was stupid, but the only thing that didn't hurt him for a change was his bad leg. Great, just great. He put his head down on the table. It was cool against his hot forehead. He closed his eyes. He wondered where Belle was. He wondered, as he often did in private, quiet moments, if Astrid was still around, if she was still alive. He sighed and his tears dripped on the table, wetting his cheek and sticking it to the plastic surface.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep.


	35. Kate's first meeting with Rumple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kate remembers the first time she met her son.

It was silly, thought Kate, but that look Mrs. Varden had given them when they arrived at the school, opening the door and the natural smile immediately falling off her face when she saw Rumple standing there on crutches and then the brittle, artificial smile that replaced it made her blood boil. And it wasn't even like Mrs. Varden was doing it on purpose, but she wanted to go right back to that school and punch the teacher in the face.

How many people had looked at him like that during his lifetime, starting with his own father? she wondered. People, treating him like he was nothing but a bother, not really wanted. She saw how used to it he was, that no matter how much it stunned her to see people act this way with him, he just seemed to expect it and that even after being with them for a year and a half, it still seemed to surprise him when people were kind or generous to him. It broke her heart.

She'd made a vow to herself that she and Chris would be different, not like all the other adults in his life who hadn't loved him enough, who'd let him down. They would make sure he lacked for nothing and even if his start in life had been rough, at least it could be good for the rest of his youth. She had kept her promise to the best of her ability, but there was a problem she hadn't foreseen; It was that she couldn't protect Rumple from everything.

She couldn't be with him while he was at school, or prevent him from being excluded from swimming lessons. She couldn't prevent other kids from teasing him or get him to stop hiding at the back of the room because he was too scared to speak up at circle time. She couldn't be with him in the operating room, when the surgeons tried to repair some of the damage to his leg, to make sure they were doing it right, not that she had any real clue about what that would look like anyway. And as much as she wished she could go back and change the past she couldn't. All the stupid, senseless things that had happened to him, all the damage that was there that could be helped, but never fully repaired.

She hadn't been prepared for her frustration over everything about his life that was out of her hands, of how little control she truly had. More than anything, she wished she could put some protective shield around him like a superhero and protect him from anybody who would hurt him. But all she could do was love him and keep telling him that she loved him, and that he was good and sweet and smart and kind, hoping that one day it would eventually sink in and he'd finally start to believe it.

She went home to her study. Her comic book pages that she was to finish penciling and inking today were laid out on her drafting table from the night before, but she just couldn't bring herself to work on them. She couldn't stop thinking about Rumple, stuck in the office like he was in trouble, despite doing nothing wrong, and the injustice of it all.

Unfairness on top of the unfairness. He had a disability that he should have never had in the first place, had he grown up in a home with proper caring adults, who would've taken him to the hospital right away when he was first injured. The unfairness of intense social anxiety caused by growing up deprived of contact with other children and early socializing influences like nursery or daycare. The unfairness of other children not cutting him any slack for his social awkwardness and inability to play certain games, excluding him, his shyness and lack of self-worth preventing him from advocating for himself and demanding to be allowed to participate as another child might do.

Kate looked down at her drafting table with a sigh. Other than her pot of pens and pencils, numerous eraser shavings and a set of T-squares for measuring there was something else on the table.

Rumple's tight pants, cut up along the leg where they'd had to remove them at the hospital. She wasn't exactly sure how they'd gotten there. She had probably taken them off when she changed him for bed and meant to throw them out in the garbage, but then got distracted by something in her study that had to be done and just left them there.

She unrolled them from the ball they'd been in and straightened them out along the drafting table.

The cut down the side of the one leg wasn't that bad. It was all one straight line up to the waistband and cut perfectly along the seam, by someone who had obviously done it before. Surgical precision. It wouldn't be so hard to sew it back up together. She had a sewing machine in the room, for doing clothing repairs and having, much to her embarrassment made some costumes in her younger years to cosplay at the local comic book expo in. Doing the seam back up wouldn't be too hard for her, even if she was out of practice with the machine. There was no reason why they had to throw the pants out. Of course even if she did sew it up, she thought gloomily, it still wouldn't matter to Rumple. He wouldn't be able to wear them and get his cast foot through the little foot hole in the bottom.

Unless… suddenly, Kate was struck by an idea. She went to the closet which was a jumble of spare toilet paper, art supplies, winter coats and sewing stuff. At last she found her sewing box, filled with all sorts of odds and ends; from buttons to crochet hooks to the very items she was looking for—zippers! Well, there was only one zipper to be exact. It was long and it wasn't black like the colour of the pants but bright red. No wonder she'd never used it. She supposed it wouldn't really matter so much if the zipper was a different colour as long as it let Rumple put his pants on. Of course, she thought as she laid the zipper out and picked out a spool of red thread, if the pants were halfway unzipped all the time to accommodate his cast the ends would flap around all over the place, making it even harder for him to walk with his crutches. But if she could put something there to keep the ends back, to tie the corners down so they stayed up. She hunted through the sewing box and found a pair of snaps. It wouldn't be elegant, but it just might work.

Kate sat down to with her supplies sand the little pair of pants in front of her wondering if what she was doing made any sense. Rumple might hate them, she had to concede. Might think what she was doing was just wrecking them further. But inside she suspected he wouldn't think so. Inside she thought he just might like it. It would be a change at least, a little bit of moving forward to how she hoped things would be for him in the future, where he could wear any pants he wanted, even if for now it was still a bit pretend. And she'd get him brand new ones, with no zipper or snaps or anything when his cast came off, she promised herself.

She really did want to do this for him. Sometimes it seemed remarkable to her that she and Chris had had a life before he'd come to him. Now whenever she came back from taking him to school, back to the house alone, it seemed so remarkably quiet in a way it never had before. It was so odd, that Kate found herself filling up the space in her mind with little ghostly mini-Rumples. She pictured one Rumple at the foot of the stairs with a crutch stuck between the wall and the bannister, demanding to know the secret word before he let her cross the magic drawbridge. And another Rumple with his markers and crayons spread willy nilly across the dining room table drawing pictures of the wizard's adventures in the dark castle, trying to make it look like one of Kate's comic books, with crooked squares around the characters, trying to make them look like they were in panels. And another mini-Rumple hiding in the clothes hamper under all the towels, and her with no clue of how he actually got in there, look as pleased as punch with his little nest. Rumple looking through his album of stickers at the table before school, expertly describing the sticker economy he and Belle and Victor had developed, wherein certain stickers were worth more than others, depending on their size, fuzziness or shininess or puffiness and rarity and the intricate goings on in their sticker dealings with each other. Rumple sitting on his bed asking her how "she made his clothes into squares?" Which she eventually came to understand was him asking her how to fold clothes, a concept he seemed hitherto unfamiliar with.

As Kate began to sew and the machine hummed merrily along she thought of the very first day he entered their lives. She remembered the first day they'd known of his existence, as a file on the desk of the social worker: words like language delay, physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, excessive timidity, selective mutism, lack of formal education, malnutrition, pneumonia. A small colour photo of a boy with huge brown eyes clutching a Spiderman toy, six years old. There were x-rays too. With little emotion the caseworker explained the situation with his leg, the break which they could date to around two years before, a compound fracture that had never been set, the resulting growth arrest and misalignment. "It'll need some pretty serious surgical intervention. As it is now, he can't step down without pain, so he mostly crawls or uses a cane if he absolutely has to stand. He can't at all, mostly because it hurts him too much, we think. He doesn't say anything about it, but then he doesn't say much about anything. Best estimate by the doctors who looked at him at Sick Kids is it'll probably be a few years before he'll be able to walk completely unaided, but it should actually be possible eventually. According to them anyway." The woman gave a slight, unenthusiastic shrug and closed the file.

Chris had known what to expect. She was a social worker after all. She had set up this meeting, knew a little bit about the child ahead of time. Now she was beginning to think perhaps she should have better prepared her partner, noticing how quiet the usually bubbly Kate was. She seemed so pensive. Chris knew that whatever child they chose to foster with the intention to adopt would probably come with a whole history and that most of it wouldn't be pleasant. There were reasons children got taken from their homes and placed into care, after all.

However, she didn't want to say anything about it to Kate on the elevator, just in case people from the agency were hanging around.

Afterwards they went downstairs to Treats, the coffee and cookie shop on the ground floor of the Children's Aid Society to talk about it. Chris reached across to take Kate's hand as she nibbled on a cookie.

"Are you having doubts?" asked Chris softly. For her part, Chris was certain she wanted to adopt the boy. The only red flags she had been looking for were any serious issues regarding violence towards his caregivers, other children or his own self. That was more than she thought she or Kate could reasonably handle at the moment. She was used to seeing and hearing about children in Rumple's situation all the time, and had assumed that Kate wouldn't be thrown by it, but perhaps she had miscalculated. "Please tell me honestly, do you think it's more than we can handle? Don't just say whatever you have to say to please me, okay? Kate, this is serious. If we make this decision it will change all three of our lives forever."

Kate looked up with a nervous smile. "I was just thinking… what if he doesn't like us?"

Chris gaped at Kate. "That's your issue with this? You're worried he isn't going to like us?"

"Uh-huh." Kate looked down sheepishly at her empty plate.

"Oh sweetie!" said Chris, overcome and reached across the table and gave Kate a big hug. "He'll love you."

Sitting in her study Kate held up the modified pants. Chris was right, she thought.


	36. Astrid Leaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumple dreams of the day Astrid left.

Warning: This part is a little intense.

Rumple dreamed about Astrid. They weren't the usual dreams of the two of them, when things were good, when they were having fun together.

He dreamed about how it was right before the end, when things started to go bad a while after Malcolm left. Rumple couldn't remember that part of his life very well. He'd been sick for a good part of it and feverish, but there were still things he remembered clearly, things he knew.

He remember not having any money. Astrid tried different things to make some, but she couldn't leave Rumple behind for very long.

If she made enough for food she gave him most of it. The medicine curbed her appetite anyway, she explained.

Sometimes Astrid thought about taking more of it, just letting herself slip painlessly away, but then she knew Rum would be lost for sure. She was the only one there for him and as bad as she felt, she needed to survive to make sure he did. They went along for months like this, Astrid always promising she'd get a job soon and that she'd be able to pay back the rent to Bob, who they were subletting their room from in the broken down house. Finally, after months of this, Bob got fed up and kicked her and Rumple out.

They went to a shelter at first and it was better than okay, it was a marked improvement. They had more food and the shelter was warm so Rumple didn't shiver like a tiny leaf in the night. But then the people at the shelter began pestering Astrid about Rumple and whose kid he was and was he really hers and who did he really belong to.

Soon Astrid began to worry they would contact the authorities. Astrid was afraid of the police and of Rumple getting taken away. If they did that she knew she would never see him again. She wasn't related to him and had no real claim to him. She might even be charged with kidnapping! So they would move to a new shelter before people got overly suspicious. Unfortunately, soon they had exhausted all the shelters in the city that took kids and women. Astrid was worried the police would take Rumple away. She called them "the fuzz" or "the filth." She said when they picked you up they might try to hurt you, touch you in funny places, at least that was her experience and if she complained who would believe her? She was a homeless junkie and all that. No, she'd stay well away from the authorities, thank you very much.

It would've been fine if it were summer. It didn't matter if you slept in an abandoned building then, but now winter was approaching. October brought snow by Halloween and November was completely frigid. Astrid had spent a winter on the street in London, living in squats. You could survive without heat there. It wasn't pleasant, but with some medicine and a drink in your belly, and lots of blankets, and a space heater you were warm enough for the worst of it. That wouldn't suffice here, she soon realized.

Astrid hadn't been in Canada for very long. This was only her third year there. After her Mum in the UK got fed up with her and sent her away to live with her Dad in Canada, she'd spent one winter in his house and the next one after he got tired of her too, she'd been with friends, at a shelter and then with Malcolm. There'd always been heat at least, not to mention the past two winters had been unseasonably mild. This winter however, was brutal. Niagara Falls froze over for the first time since the 1930s.

Astrid and Rumple spent the daytime hours in the mall downtown where it was heated or in the libraries. The subways ran until 1:30am and they were warm enough and there were buses that ran all night, also heated. Still, the nights were bad. It seemed they always had colds they couldn't shake, runny noses, coughs and fevers. They stayed on public transit for as long as they could, but they needed sleep and the use of toilets and they didn't want to arouse the suspicions of the bus drivers. Sometimes holing up in an abandoned house was unavoidable.

Then the bad fevers came, with vomiting and coughs that tore at your lungs and feeling so cold your fingers felt like they were burning, shivering in the frosty air so hard when you lay down that you nearly cracked your head against the floor beneath you.

By the end of December, Astrid had been coughing nonstop. Her cheeks were no longer round. In fact she was so skinny the bones stood out on her face and chest. Even the medicine couldn't stop her from feeling wheezy and shivering beside Rumple at night, holding him close against the cold, wrapped in sleeping bags and smelly blankets on the bare concrete of another lakefront condo under construction, beside a little fire that did nothing to stop the cold.

One night in the dark, shivering Rumple remembered saying, "Astrid, I feel so sick. I'm so cold. Are we going to die?"

Rumple remembered how she'd almost stopped speaking to him. He barely talked himself. They tried to conserve energy. It was so cold even his eyeballs felt dry and frozen, like cold ice cubes in his skull.

"No," Astrid said. "You're not going to die Rumple. You're going to live." And by the light of the tiny fire in the wastepaper basket he could see her eyes—large and bulging in her face and all the planes of her skull underneath her pink hair sticking out like sharp edges in the shadows the fire threw. And suddenly he felt frightened of her, almost as if she was Malcolm. He could see she had a scheme brewing, something desperate, and he had no idea what that was. She had not told him like she usually did.

For days Astrid had been thinking that she had to do something. She didn't want to trust Rumple to the system that she'd, the very one that had failed her back in the UK, that kept sending her back to her neglectful mum time after time, or put her with weird religious families that called the things she did a sin, but she knew if she kept Rumple by her any longer, there was no way he'd make it.

It would be selfish to bring him down with her just so she wouldn't have to face what remained of her life alone. Yet it was hard to think of letting him go. Of all the people she'd known in her life, from her mother to her grandmother to her father, to all the useless relatives and boyfriends and so-called friends in between, Rumple, small as he was, was the only one she'd ever met who'd truly appreciated her, who genuinely wanted her by his side.

Even if it seemed to the outside world that Rumple was the one who clearly needed Astrid the most, for food and shelter and mobility and just about everything, what no one could see was that Astrid needed him just as desperately. She was real for Rumple. She existed for him. Without him, what purpose did she have in life? What was she other than some useless unwanted person who nobody loved? Another druggie to be swept off the street. What proof was there that she had even lived and breathed on this planet at all?

She loved Rumple, genuinely loved him. If he was her own child she didn't think she could've loved him more. He was all she had in the world and she had hung onto him so tightly, that she wondered now if it wasn't too late already. She knew he hardly spoke anymore. He shivered so much and seemed so light and thin and weak as she bundled him into his stroller that last time. She tried to be careful when she picked him up. She knew his bad leg always hurt him when she jostled it or twisted it accidentally, picking him up or trying to get him in and out of the stroller. Usually he'd cry out or yell at her crossly if she hurt him. Swear words, weren't unheard of.

But her fingers were so numb now, that she couldn't help but twist his crooked leg a little as she fumbled to get the belt between his legs, unable to manipulate his body with the care she was accustomed to. It frightened her that he didn't make a sound of protest or complaint. Either he was so numb from cold he couldn't feel it, or he was so weak he couldn't bother to make much of a sound. All she heard was a slight whimper and that worried her more than anything.

With a silent prayer to a god she'd didn't really believe in, she finished strapping him in for one final trip together across the city.

Like on all extremely cold nights in the city, the sky was clear and black and cloudless. You could rarely see any stars because of all the light pollution from the city, but that night Astrid and Rumple could see a few, the sky was so clear with cold. Astrid wasn't sure if he was awake, but still she tried to point out a few of them to him. She tried to remember the names of constellations, but it was fruitless.

She didn't really know any, so she just made some up. "See that's the Fairy Nebula," she pointed out to him, recalling his love of fairies. She looked down hoping he would say something, suddenly terrified when he didn't move. But then he shifted in his stroller and she was relieved. She felt dizzy as she walked along, coughing, glad for the stroller to put her weight against, otherwise she thought she would faint and tumble over. At one point she stopped pushing and leaned against a telephone pole to catch her breath. How could she be so worn out just from pushing him a few blocks?

Rumple turned around with a jerky sort of half-frozen motion, craning his neck to see if she was all right.

"Astrid? Y'okay?" he mumbled.

"Yeah, Rumple Bumple, I'm fine. I'm okay. Just catching my breath yeah?"

"M'cold. When we gonna get there?"

"Soon baby, soon."

"I'm not a baby," he said and close his eyes.

She took the handles of the stroller and began to push again as he sank back wearily into the folds of the blanks and slept. He was still sleeping when they got to Sick Children's Hospital on University Avenue.

Astrid picked him up and held him close. He was shivering even as he slept, though his forehead was warm. The warmth of the emergency room heat closed in around her as they went through the massive sliding doors. She didn't want to leave to go back out in the cold, but she knew if she didn't go right after dropping him off, she'd never be able to leave him.

The nurses passed by her in the halls, their faces irritated and grim. She held Rumple closer. No she wouldn't trust him to any of them. Not someone like that. He'd be afraid. At least she could leave him with someone who looked kind and gentle. She could do that much for him.

Finally she found one nurse in the corridor who seemed to have a kind face.

"Please," she said softly, holding Rumple in her arms and pushing his stroller forward with her foot. "My son—he's very ill. He has a fever."

"Have you registered him at the main desk? It's just over there," recommended the nurse with a pleasant look of concern on her face.

"I will, I just—" Damn, what should she say? Inspiration hit. "I just need to go to the bathroom. I'm—I'm just bursting, please."

"You can take him inside with you if you wish. We have family washrooms over down that hall."

"No, I—he's disabled, he can't walk or get up. Please, I'll only be a moment. Please, please, if you could just keep an eye on him for a minute."

"Well, okay, I—"

"Thank you. Bless," said Astrid and then she knew it was time. She put Rumple back in and buckled him up. Thank God he didn't stir.

Then with one agonized look back at her little friend, the best friend she'd ever had in her entire life, even if he was just six years old, she slipped between a group of people just coming in from the outside and ran down the corridor towards the exit.

The floor was wet and slippery from people tracking in snow, but Astrid didn't care. She had to get out of the hospital, to get far away. Otherwise she knew she'd come right back. She missed Rumple already. She could feel his loss like a hole in her heart, growing bigger and bigger with every step she took.

But in her mind's eye she saw his large brown eyes again and small peaked face and the time she'd cut his hair and took him to the beach and the time she'd stolen toys for him for his birthday and teaching him all her favourite David Bowie songs. The very first time she'd taken him to the park. Who would care for him without her? What if no one ever did? What if no one ever took him into their hearts and loved him? And then she thought, what if someone did. What if he forgot all about her, like she had never been in his life at all. What had she done for him after all, but tie him down to her stupid junkie self, almost let him die of cold and sickness in the process. She was selfish, a horrible, wicked person with a drug habit. She didn't deserve a sweet kid like him. No she didn't deserve him.

Astrid finally stopped when she was a few blocks away from the hospital. The night was silent and there were no cars. She had no idea what time it was. The sky was black black black like a dark abyss without stars. Her face was cold and she realized her tears had actually frozen onto her cheeks.

She had never felt such pain before in her soul. It seemed never ending, that abyss, that hole. She knew she need to fill it, that gaping maw of loss devouring her soul more and more with every breath. She needed to fill it with something, anything. Medicine, she needed medicine. Just to make the pain go away. To forget. Anything to forget.


	37. Waking Up

Rumple awoke to familiar voices outside the room. He was shivering, not realizing he was sitting under an air conditioning vent that the school board still had on inexplicably despite the current weather. It was as if the cold from his memories and dreams was still in the room and he was shivering. Somewhere Maurice was talking. 

“We went to Belle’s classroom, but no one was there. Do you know where they all went?”

“Oh,” said the Beth, the secretary. “Mrs. Varden’s class has swimming at the community centre for PE, but they should be back by the bell in fifteen minutes. Probably best if you guys just wait here for them.” 

Rumple blinked. How long had he been asleep? Was Maurice really here in the office with him or was he still dreaming? 

He sat up. 

“Do you have any books to read here?” piped up Belle. 

No that was definitely Belle. Belle. “Belle!” Rumple called out, worried she would disappear and scrambled for his crutches. 

Outside in the office Belle looked around. She thought she heard Rumple’s voice, but it sounded so faint. “Rumple?”

“Belle!” Rumple emerged from the little room. 

His face was still splotchy from crying, with a big pink blotch on one cheek where he had laid it on the plastic surface of the table. Belle thought he’d never looked so glad to see her in his life. 

“Rumple what’s wrong? What are you doing in the office?” 

Soon the whole story came tumbling out of him: “I walked all the way here because I didn’t want the stroller and then I was really tired and then they wouldn’t let me go swimming because of my cast and then I got really mad at Mummy Kate and she left and I had to do this stupid worksheet and I drew a boy with a frowny face and then I fell asleep and Astrid was in my dream and it was when I was really sick and I got left at the hospital and I was so cold and scared and it was horrible and then I work up and I was all alone!” 

By the end of this recitation Rumple was panting a little. 

Maurice put his large hand on Rumple’s back. “Hey now, it’s okay. We’re here now. Why don’t we all sit together and read, okay? I’ll wait with you guys here until your teacher comes back with the class alright?” 

“Uh-huh,” Rumple nodded gratefully and let Maurice help him up onto a chair. 

Belle brought over a plastic washtub full of books that they had in the office. “Can we read Herman the Helper?” she asked, holding up a book with a picture of a smiling octopus on the cover. 

“Sure,” said Maurice. “Good choice. What do you think Rumple?”

Rumple just nodded. He was so grateful to have them there to chance the scary dreams and memories away he would have been happy for Maurice to read a phonebook. 

Belle climbed up on the chair beside him with the book.

“But how come you were late?” Rumple asked her worriedly. “Is your Mum okay?” 

“Yeah,” said Belle. “She’s doing lots better! I even got to see her after I went to the dentist.”

“The dentist?” 

“Yeah, with everything going on over the weekend with Mum and the transplant and everything, we totally forgot I had a teeth cleaning appointment this morning.”

“Teeth cleaning?” 

“Uh-huh.” Belle gave him a big grin, showing all her teeth. “See? What do you think?”

“Uh, very shiny,” he complimented her. 

“Thanks, Rum! Anyways, the dentist place was really close to the hospital so we popped in on Mum and brought her orange juice for her breakfast and she was happy to see us and talking more! You were right about her getting better slowly, you were!” she said and squeezed Rumple’s hand. 

Rumple gave her a little smile. 

“Hey, are the pictures we made still there?”

Rumple pulled down his big sock and showed her. 

“Cool,” she said and touched his cast. “Don’t worry Rum, you’ll get better soon too. Then we can swim lots and lots together and we can go to the Douglas Snow pool at City Centre. It’s way better than the stinky old community pool anyway. 

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. It’s super big and they have a real water slide and foamy pool noodles and nets and a big hot tub and inner tubes and climbing nets that go up to the ceiling and a floating slip n’ slide. We’ll go when you get your cast off, right Dad?” Belle asked her father.

“Sure,” said Maurice. 

Rumple didn’t know half of what the things Belle was talking about were or what they even looked like or if he could do any of them even with his cast off, but they sounded awesome and he knew he wanted to try. It would be better, he thought wisely, to swim for the first time for real with Belle and Maurice. He knew they wouldn’t get irritated or impatient with him because things took him a long time or he got scared of the water and they wouldn’t think he was weird because he’d never been swimming before. They wouldn’t make fun or splash him if he was frightened. It would be all right to wait to go swimming if he got to go to the special pool with Belle his first time. He snuggled into Maurice’s bulky side as the Belle’s dad began reading from the book. It was all about a little octopus with eight arms (or were they legs?) who liked doing lots of things to help other creatures in the sea. Rumple thought about how Maurice told him he was helpful and like his own son, when he took them all out for Chinese food and felt the afterglow of pride he’d felt at the time once more. Sitting beside Belle’s dad Rumple felt safe and cozy and the nightmares and scary memories faded, borne away by the slow and steady rythme of the older man’s voice.


	38. Rumple is not Ready

Rumple is not Ready

 

Rumple is ready. 

Or So Kate and Chris think.   
He has on his new and improved tight pants with the zipper half zipped on and the flaps snapped up to accommodate his cast. He has a Converse sneaker on his good foot and Kate’s Batman sock on the other one. He has on his new T- with the guitar on it and a jean jacket. He even has gel (!) in his hair to keep it from falling in his eyes. He looks, he thinks, like a grown-up, or at least a cool teenager. He is wearing his non-school backpack on his back. Inside is the card he made for Rose and a big drawing of a rose he painted and cut out with help from Mummy Kate as a gift for her. There are other things too, small gifts for Belle’s mum that Mummy Chris let him pick out at the dollar store. These are: a packet of miniature playing cards in a purple plastic case, a set of hair barrettes with strawberries on them and a packet of fairy stickers. Mummy Chris has reassured him, for the umpteenth time that Rose will like these things. For herself she and Mummy Kate have brought a bamboo plant in a fancy porcelain jar. It is made up of five sticks of twisting bamboo, which Mummy Chris has explains means “good health.” 

And then Chris handed Rumple his crutches and said, “Time to go.”

And Rumple remained standing as if he had not heard her, holding onto the bannister. 

Seeing that he hadn’t made a move towards grabbing them, Chris inserted one under one of his arms and the other, under the other. Rumple let go of the bannister and stood leaning on his crutches, but he still didn’t make a move to follow Chris as she headed to the front door. 

Kate was in the car already, honking the horn. 

“Hold your horses!” Chris shouted out at her through the open door. 

She turned back to Rumple. He looked terrified. “Hey, Little Man,” she said softly, trying to coax him out of the shell he seemed to have crawled right back into, “what’s wrong? Are you afraid to go to the hospital?”

“A little.”

“But it’s okay,” explained Chris gently. “It’s not the hospital for kids. It’s the grown-up hospital. They won’t want to do anything to you there, I promise.” 

Rumple still didn’t move. “I know,” he said, “but…”

“You’re scared, but not—not of that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What of then?”

“What if she doesn’t like me?”

“What?”

“What if Rose, Belle’s mum you know—what if she doesn’t like me?”

“Why in the world wouldn’t she like you?” asked Chris, bewildered.

Rumple looked down, scratching his cast against the shin of his other leg “I’m not a dragon rider.” 

“You’re not a what?”

“Dragon rider,” he explained, exasperated. 

“Why would she think--?”

“Belle told her I was a dragon rider and that I was very brave and a hero and I defended and helped all these people who were in trouble and saved them and that’s how I got hurt. But it’s not true. Also, that I was raised by fairies and could fly with them and came from this enchanted land and time travelled and was a wizard in training and did all this other cool stuff. But it’s all fake. And her mum is going to see me now and… and I’m not cool like that. And she’s gonna know that I’m not brave and I’m not magical. She’s going to be disappointed.” 

“Rumple—“ said Chris trying to interrupt him, but he just kept going, barely pausing for breath.

“And she’ll think I lied to Belle to try n’ make myself look cool and she’s going to be disappointed and not let me play with Belle anymore and then I won’t have any friends anymore and Belle will make fun of me just like everyone else and say I’m a baby and   
Maurice is going to think I’m a liar and hate me too and then he won’t do T-ball with me and Belle at the park and I need him to help me do T-ball because I need him to hold me up so I can hit the ball and—“

“Rumple just stop!” Chris exclaimed loudly and finally this made him settle down. “You’re being ridiculous. Rose does not think you were a dragon rider or talked to fairies or are a wizard in training or any of that other stuff.”

“She doesn’t? But Belle said she said—“

“Belle is good at telling stories and making things up and I think her Mum knows that because Belle is her little girl and she knows how she is. I don’t think she really believes any of what Belle told her about you other than that you’re her friend and she likes playing with you.” 

“But Belle—why did Belle have to make up stories about me to her Mum? Why couldn’t she just tell her how I really was? Is she embarrassed of me how I am?”

“No, honey,” she sighed. “I think embarrassed is the last thing Belle is with you. She’s proud that you’re her friend.”

“Then why?”

“Belle is a very imaginative girl. Sometimes for very imaginative people ordinary life can be a bit… drab, you know. They like to spice things up a bit and pretend things are different than they are. It’s just how Belle is, just the way, you’re the way you are.”

“Oh.”

“And maybe, you know maybe at the base of it there is truth to what Belle says.”

“That I’m a wizard or some kind of brave hero? Come on,” he snorted.

Chris shrugged. “Not exactly, but maybe that’s how Belle feels about you? That to her, you are kind of a hero, that you make her feel good and defend her against bad feelings. Like, when she’s inclined to be sad or lonely or worried about her mum, you make her feel better and that’s a kind of magic right?”

Rumple looked dubious. “That’s ‘diculous.”

“Ridiculous, you mean.”

“Whatever. Also how can I ride a dragon if I can’t ride a bike? Not even the kind with training wheels like Belle can and she’s only five years old.”

“You will in time. You have to be patient, it will come.”

“Belle’s mum thinks I’m so cool and brave, but I’m not. I just suck. Belle’s the only one who can’t see it.”

“What about me and your Mummy Kate? We don’t think you suck,” said Chris indignantly. 

“You don’t know! If I was a character in a video game no one would play me because I can’t do anything!”

“Like what? You’re a child Rumple. Honestly, no one’s expecting you to do anything but learn how to be a good grown-up someday and a good friend and treat others with respect and courtesy and you already do that. It’s not like we’re waiting for you shoot villains with lasers out your bum or anything!”

She was relieved to get a small laugh from this, but Rumple still seemed less then inclined to go to the car. “Rose is still going to think I suck,” he repeated stubbornly. 

“Don’t say that about yourself Rumple, that you suck. It’s awful.” 

“You just say that because you don’t know me.”

“I don’t know you? Rumple I’m with you more than anyone else here but Kate and I can tell you she doesn’t think you suck either. We both think you’re great and so does Belle and so does Maurice and so will Rose, I promise!”

Rumple narrowed his eyes. “You promise for reals?”

“Yes of course.” 

“Not a ‘Rumple you won’t get a cast again’ promise?”

“Oh come on, are you ever going to let me forget that? Now let’s go,” said Chris and turned around and moved to the door. This time Rumple hobbled along after her trying to propose a deal. “Can I have ice cream later if I come?”


	39. Singing for Rose

Okay, this is going to get really big really soon… just warning ya…

 

Rumple moved as slowly as he could down the hall. 

“Come on Rumple,” said Chris. “Hurry up.”

“I can’t hurry up,” he grumbled. “Crutches.”

“Uh-huh,” Chris replied suspiciously.

Chris wasn’t buying it, having on numerous occasions seen Rumple on crutches race Belle to the swings at the park and win, (granted, even with one good leg he still had a longer stride than the smaller Belle, but it was still quite an impressive feat). She knew he was going slowly on purpose because he was afraid of meeting Belle’s mum, either that or he was angling for a lift. 

“Do you need a pick-up?” Kate asked worriedly. “Do your hands hurt?” She remembered in the beginning when he first started using them he’d get painful blisters on the palms of his hands from the crutches. Over time, he’d developed thick callouses on his palms, so he didn’t usually have a problem with that anymore, but perhaps, Kate thought the callouses had receded with the time he’d spent using the walking boot and his hands were bothering him again. 

“No, I’m fine,” said Rumple and swung himself forward with a small hop before pausing again for several seconds to stare idly at the ceiling for a while. 

Chris was pretty sure his hands felt fine. She’d only been holding them this very morning and the callouses on his palms seemed as thick as ever. 

Chris sighed as she watched Rumple take an unexpected interest in a painting on the wall which he paused to stare at. This was taking forever. Any second now she was going to lose it.

“Look, go on ahead and see Maurice,” said Kate solicitously to Chris. “See if he can get a chair ready for Rumple in the room or something, okay?”

Chris nodded and went on ahead.

Rumple kept on moving as slowly as he possibly could. At his side Kate was surprisingly quiet. He kept thinking she was going to say something and get angry, but she seemed oddly thoughtful instead. 

It had struck her all of a sudden, watching Rumple as he made his way down the hall, how tall and strong he was now. Well, not tall, exactly, not by regular standards, but compared to the frail, timid, tiny person he’d been when he came to them, he’d grown so much. His cheeks were full and his eyes were bright. Even now, going as slowly as he possibly could, there was no hiding the increased strength and energy behind his movements as he propelled himself forward. 

She remembered him as he’d been when she first met him. He still had a bit of that hollow cough from the pneumonia he’d just recovered from and dark circles under his eyes. His head and hands looked strangely big for his little body and his forearms were bigger than his puny upper arms, which looked as skinny as sticks. 

Even in the jean jacket he was wearing now she could see how much his arms had filled out since then, small biceps taking shape, little arms growing strong from all the monkey bars at the park Kate did with him, holding him by the waist as he went from bar to bar. At home he climbed all over the couches, chairs and beds, pulling and pushing himself up like a curious little monkey, as Kate watched with her heart in her mouth, terrified he’d hurt himself and fall every time, but knowing how important it was that he do this, that he be allowed to be a little child too, as much as possible. 

She could see him again in her mind’s eye at the group home when they were just getting to know him, his brown eyes enormous in his little face, crawling feebly towards her as she held out a cookie to him, like she was coaxing a stray cat into her home with food, instead of a six year old child. 

She remembered watching him taking the cookie and waiting with baited breath to see what he would do, if he would rush back to the little nest of sofa cushions he’d formed for himself in the corner where he’d been hiding once he took it. But he didn’t go back once he had the cookie in his hand. Instead he sat down in front of her, shooting her an appraising glance before manually tucking up his draggy little foot underneath him in a practiced one handed motion. Then he’d turned his attentions back to the cookie in his other hand. Concentrating very hard he carefully broke it in two. He put one half in his mouth and held out the other to Kate. 

“Here,” came his muffled little voice. “You take?” 

It was the first thing he ever said to her. 

She remembered worrying if she’d be a good mum for him, if he would like her. She understood about not feeling good enough sometimes, about worrying what others would think of you. People thought that just because she was loud and brash she never had those doubts, but it wasn’t true. 

Kate put her hand on Rumple’s shoulder. “You know when you were little, before you first came to us, I was really worried,” she told him.

“About what?”

“I was worried you wouldn’t like me, that I wouldn’t be a good mum. That you’d be disappointed with me.”

“What?” asked Rumple, completely shocked and looked up at Kate. It had never occurred to him that his mums ever felt anything but constant confidence in their roles, that they could feel self-doubt like him. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” said Kate with a smile.

Rumple thought this was patently ridiculous. After all, compared to Malcolm, Kate could was a better parent just sitting on the sofa doing nothing. She’d never taken weird medicine in front of him, or left him all alone to fall off a flight of stairs or called him bad names or yelled at him for crawling or kicked his weak leg or anything. “You’re a good mum,” he said with conviction. “You don’t have to worry about anything,” he repeated and gave her hand a squeeze.

“Thanks,” she said and beamed back at him. “And the same is true for you. You are a good friend to Belle and her family. You don’t have to worry about anything either.”

He smiled up at her and moved along a little faster. 

As they neared their destination, Maurice came out of the room, a wide grin on his face.

“Rumple!” he boomed. “Well, if it isn’t the man of the hour! Hello son! Belle and Rose can’t wait to see you!”

Rumple gave him a small, shy smile. 

“Now who wants an airplane ride?”  
Rumple gave his crutches to Kate and lifted up his arms. 

Maurice picked Rumple up in his big strong arms high over his head in a way Chris and Kate never could. Maurice flew him down the hall like an airplane making zooming noises with his mouth like a little kid. 

Rumple couldn’t help but laugh and shout “Weeeeeeeeeeeeee!” as the walls of the hospital hallway sped by him in a blur of dull, donated paintings in pastel colours. 

Suddenly, they were moving through a door and before Rumple could tell Maurice to stop to let him pause and collect his thoughts and prepare himself to meet Rose, he was there in the room, being plunked down on a huge hospital chair. The chair was so large that when Rumple sat back his feet stuck out in front of him. They only came out to the very edge.. 

He blinked and looked up. There was a hospital bed in the room. Belle’s mum’s space only took up half the room. The other part was cordoned off with a plastic curtain. A woman wearing a hospital gown with a bandage on her chest and lots of clear plastic tubes going into her arms and other parts of her was sitting propped up on the bed. Her face was a slightly funny colour and her eyes looked tired, but happy. There was a book on her lap and she had one arm around Belle, who looked like Belle always looked, although maybe a little happier and more excited than usual, thought Rumple. 

“Rumple!” cheered Belle bouncing off the bed to greet him. “Lookit Rumple! It’s my Mum! It’s my Mum!”

Rumple and Rose shared a grin at Belle’s excitement. 

“Mum! Mum! This is Rumple!” said Belle pulling her mum’s arm. “He’s my very best friend in the whole wide world!” 

Rumple chest puffed up a little with pride at hearing himself called that. Chris who was standing behind Rose’s bed caught his eye and smiled. 

“You already met his Mum Chris,” Belle explained carefully to her Mum, “and there’s his other Mum, Kate!” She pointed to Kate who was just entering the room. 

“Rumple’s their kid and he has the Playmobil Dark Castle at his house and it’s so cool! We always get to play when I’m over! He’s had lotsa operations just like you and he had six casts and never cried once!” 

Rumple cringed a little at this. He was pretty sure he’d cried every time. 

“That must’ve hurt,” said Rose gently.

“Uh-huh,” Rumple nodded and shrugged, not quite knowing what to say. He was relieved that Rose didn’t go on to ask him what the deal was with all those casts. He didn’t really want to explain it. 

“Mum, when you were getting your new lungs and Dad came to be with you, I got to stay at Rumple’s house. We had so much fun! He has video games and Netflix and when I got scared in the night ‘cause I wasn’t used to being in a strange bed, he helped me so I wasn’t scared anymore and could fall asleep!”

“Really?” asked Rose. “You helped my little girl fall asleep when she was frightened and worried?”

“Uh-huh,” nodded Belle, “he did. He’s magical!”

“It’s not magic,” spoke up Rumple, eager not to let Belle mislead Rose. 

“Well, then how did you do it?” asked Rose with a smile. “You must tell me! I know how hard it is to get my Belle to sleep when she’s all wound up. It’s nearly impossible. What’s your secret?” 

“It’s no secret,” he said shyly. “I just—I just kind of sang to her.”

“What did you sing to her?” Rose asked softly. 

“It’s just this song,” said Rumple, looking down and swinging his feet.

“Would you teach it to me?” inquired Rose. “I’d love to learn it. I need to know how to get Belle to sleep, for when I go home with her for good again. I’m a little out of practice you see.”

Rumple did not reply. He was shy about singing in front of other people.

“Don’t worry Mum, I know the song!” piped up Belle. “It’s from the Guardians of the Galaxy. It goes: ‘There’s a Starlord singing in the sky!’” sang Belle, “He likes to come and shake us, but who knows the reason why?” she continued.

Rumple still had his qualms about singing in front of all these people, but this was definitely not the song he’d sung to Belle. To hear her demolish one of his favourite songs in this way, one of the ones Astrid had taught him all the words to, was more than he could tolerate. He couldn’t help himself from correcting her. “No Belle, that’s not how it goes,” he said. “It’s not from Starlord from Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a David Bowie song. It goes: ‘there’s a Starman waiting in the sky…’”.

Soon Rose was asking him what other songs he used to get Belle to sleep and Belle had helpfully supplied them with “Pixie dust and the spy-heads from Mars.” 

“No, that’s not it!” said Rumple, unable to stop himself once again, forgetting his nervousness in his indignation of David Bowie songs being sung incorrectly. “It’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It goes, ‘Ziggy played guitar…’” he sang again, his small voice lilting up into a sweet treble sound. 

Kate smiled to herself as Rumple sang Ziggy Stardust in his high clear voice, making sure not to neglect a single word.


	40. Reunion

Sorry it took so long. This chapter is a big one. Get ready for some surprises… 

******

 

The sheets were wonderfully clean and white. She was sleeping on a bed with an actual mattress in a room with electric lights in it, with her head on a pillow that didn’t reek of damp and mold. The rain pattered against the window, but it didn’t touch her. She was inside and dry and there was TV.

People came and went from the room. Astrid did not care. The first few days she didn’t even know where she was. As her condition stabilized it became clearer, but she still couldn’t speak after what they’d done to her throat with the tube, it hurt too much. Then withdrawal began and she no longer knew what was real and what was just another hallucination. 

People came and went and did things with her IV and helped her to the bathroom. Just getting up and walking to the toilet, using it and coming back exhausted her. 

In the mirror her face looked like someone had sucked all the substance out of it. She was sick, she knew.

They had explained it to her, but what they said was fuzzy and she couldn’t bring herself to care. She did what they asked her to do, stick out your tongue, roll on your side whatever. They brought her food, but she didn’t feel like eating. Sometimes she had some water or juice. She wanted to tell them all that there was no point to it. Dripping whatever was in the IV into her veins to keep her alive, bringing the food. That they should just stop wasting their time. 

She knew that as soon as they kicked her out of the hospital she wouldn’t be able to afford whatever medicine they prescribed her anyway and if they gave it to her for free she probably wouldn’t take it, just trade it to one of the dealers for a different kind of drugs. 

Why prolong the inevitable? What did she have to live for anyway? 

Her life was a strange one here. 

Separated from Astrid by a plastic curtain and the yawning chasm of a completely different upbringing, there was a woman from a world very different from her own.

She might as well have been an alien. This other woman was very, very sick, should’ve died ages ago, but she hung onto life with incredible tenacity. She had many visitors, this other woman, most frequent among them a husband and a little daughter, who filled her with words of love and encouragement. There were friends too, friends who brought board games, Scrabble, Sorry and Boggle, who worked on knitting with her, scarves and other useless things as they gossiped about people they knew in common. Sometimes they just watched TV together, this woman and her friends, making snarky sarcastic comments about the people on the dreadful daytime TV shows, turning off the volume and replacing it with their own silly voiceovers. 

Astrid’s favourite game when she was in her right mind was to lie there and pretend she was this woman or this woman’s friend. She knew this woman wouldn’t judge her like everyone else. She’d look at Astrid, who’d been born healthy and had pretty much thrown away her health on junk, and she wouldn’t turn up her nose in scorn. She’d understand what Astrid had come from, all she’d dealt with at such a young age with no one around to hold her or comfort her or show her the right way. This woman would open her arms and hug her and invite her into her house to be her friend. 

Sometimes Astrid thought of talking to her, this woman, separated from her by such a thin plastic membrane, that she could see the doctors and visitors come into her room, shadows on the frosted plastic, but she was too afraid. 

She just knew the woman would reject her, after all she was just a useless junkie, taking up bed space from someone else, someone useful to society, a person other people needed who was sick through no fault of their own. She saw how the nurses looked at her and how they tsked at the collapsed veins on her arms, looking for a place to put in the IV. She was glad she hadn’t been using in that way when Rumple was in her life. 

Most of the time Astrid couldn’t really be bothered to care about what was going on, The world held nothing of interest to her any longer. Only the woman and her little girl on the other side of the curtain occasionally roused her curiosity, and even then, just by the teensiest bit. 

The little girl sounded and acted just about the age Rumple would be now. Her mind supplied her with the thought before she could squash it down. The age Rumple would be IF he survived. 

That was the one thing that really bothered her about dying, that she’d never know what happened to Rumple, if he still needed her help. How would she ever know if she’d done the right thing by him? Who could she ask who wouldn’t try to put her in prison for child abandonment or something? Who would even know what had become of him? It gnawed at her, that one, uncertain thought, kept her up at night, unable to rest. Much as she’d tried to forget with drink and drugs, she couldn’t forget his little face, staring up uncertainly at her that last night when she’d pointed out the stars to him from his stroller. 

Had she brought him to the hospital too late? Had her selfishness in wanting him near her killed him? And if he did get better, would he ever find a family to adopt him? What if they never found anyone to adopt him, a little boy who barely talked, who couldn’t walk, who was afraid of just about everything? She knew what it was like to feel unwanted, passed from hand to hand, merely tolerated, never loved. She’d been in foster care for a bit, before the council had deemed her mother competent to care for her once again. (How they’d decided that Astrid had no idea. No one ever asked her.) 

It seemed there were always plenty of disabled kids in foster care, left unadopted along with those with “behavior problems.” She remembered how some of the really disturbed kids used to be violent, for no obvious reason, just lashing out at whoever was around, breaking things and hitting other children. The adults tried their best, but all it took was for them to turn their head for one second, for one of the bad kids to take the opportunity to bop you in the face. What would happen to Rumple around kids like that? She pictured all the other kids running away and Rumple crawling along, unable to run, left in the dust, never managing to get away fast enough from fists and feet. 

The thought made her sick to her stomach. She wondered if he hated her now, if he thought she’d abandoned him because she didn’t care, thought she’d never loved him in the first place. How could he know how much it hurt to give him up? Who would be there to tell him, that if she hadn’t taken him into the hospital he would’ve died? Maybe it would’ve been better, if she’d just let it happen, she thought darkly. What sort of life could he possibly have now? Maybe he would’ve been better off dead like Malcolm. 

Malcolm. She hated him now. Now that he was gone and she realized a bit more what he had done to her, how he taken advantage of her innoncence in just about every way possible. She knew what had happened to Malcolm or thought she knew. A guy who’d been down in the States with him had come back and told them. Then there were some of the kinder cops out in Moss Park spreading the word among the folks who might have been Malcolm Gold’s friends, wanting to know about next of kin, if he’d had a wife or children, but Astrid didn’t dare tell them what she knew. She didn’t trust cops.

She tried to go back to sleep. It was easy to do, the bed was so comfy and she was tired, so very very tired of everything.

The door on the other side of the room, beyond the curtain opened, disturbing her just as she was drifting off. She heard the sound of women’s voices added to those of the female patient and her husband and the squeak of wet sneakers on the tiled floor and other walking and coming in noises she couldn’t quite identify. 

There was a chair on Astrid’s side of the curtain that no one ever sat in. She hadn’t had a single visitor since she’d been admitted. It was probably better that way. The only people she knew who might want to come visit would probably just steal the contents of her IV and pill cup.

Suddenly, the plastic curtain separating the room was pushed a little to one side. Astrid gaped at this strange violation. A plump man squeezed through the gap and replaced the curtain flush with the wall. 

Astrid stared. The husband of the woman on the other side. In the flesh! What was he doing here? 

“Excuse me,” he said politely, “are you awake?”

Not trusting her voice to work properly, Astrid just nodded. 

“Would it be alright if I borrowed your chair? We have some extra guests today!” he exclaimed cheerfully, a note of warmth and vitality in his voice that was so far away from what she currently felt that it seemed like he had landed in her room from another planet. How was it possible to even sound that way?

“No problem,” croaked out Astrid.

“Thanks love, I owe you one!” said the man, and his eyes crinkled up at the corners as he smiled at her. A genuine smile. When was the last time someone smiled at her like that? He seemed like a nice man. Astrid hoped his wife got better. 

She closed her eyes and fell into a light sleep. Unlike some people, as soon as Astrid shut her eyes, she always began to dream right away. She was dreaming now of Rumple. He often came to her this way, in dreams and lately with her withdrawal from drugs in the hallucinations that accompanied them. 

He was the same as she remembered him yet paradoxically different. She dreamed of the one Halloween they’d had together, where she’d taken him down to Church Street and let people fill his little basket full of candy, held tightly between his knees in his stroller. She remembered the day before, how she’d nicked a package of face paints from Rexall’s and painted a sparkly red zig zag down one side of his face across his eye just like David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. Then she added sparkly golden dust to his cheeks and hair. Over his jacket and pants that he needed to stay warm in late October in Toronto she’d put the sparkly orange tank top she used to wear when clubbing. In her dream they were back on that Halloween night although it looked a little different. For some reason it wasn’t dark and the sun was shining and Rumple was singing in his little high pitched voice “Ziggy played guitar, jamming good with Web and Gailey and the Spiders from Mars…”

Then Astrid began to pull out of the dream. The singing was so loud and so real, that it seemed to be coming from a real place outside of her head. Astrid opened her eyes. Rumple was outside her dream now, singing on the other side of the curtain, like they used to sing together. 

Although she hadn’t had a hallucination for a few days now, she knew it had to be one. 

“Screwed up eyes and screwed down hair-do like some cat from Japan…” sang the high little Rumple voice, muddling up her mind. 

It was bothering her, making her hurt inside and weep for her little lost friend. She didn’t want to remember how happy she’d been back then, what it felt like to have a little bit of hope and love in her life, now that that had all had turned to dust. 

If she just opened the curtain, and saw he wasn’t there on the other side, then maybe the hallucination would go away and stop tormenting her, stop making her remember, mocking her with all she no longer had. Or maybe the hallucination would be strong, she thought with sudden feverish hope, and maybe she would see him. It had happened before, the time he’d appeared to her standing at the foot of her bed, grinning cheekily. Of course she knew it wasn’t really him. The real Rumple couldn’t stand like that, not on his own, without a stick or anything. But it had comforted her at the time to see him there. Even this fake version of him made her feel a little less alone. 

She spent a bit of time mustering the strength to move the curtain aside. It seemed so far, so far away. Too far to reach from her bed. Gingerly she sat up and the world swirled around her. She was weak, far too weak to do this. 

She paused and waited for the motion of the room to settle down. Rumple was still singing, coming to the end of the song.

“Ziggy played guitar-ar-ar….” sang the high little voice. 

There was clapping on the other side of the curtain. “Well done! Well done Rumple!” said a blend of voices. “That was awesome!” said another high-pitched child voice, not Rumple’s. 

“Thanks,” mumbled another child’s voice. That, thought Astrid, that one there was Rumple’s, though a little deeper and louder than she remembered it. How odd.  
Wait, what? 

Astrid thrust aside the curtain. 

The adults in the room clustered around the bed of the sick woman, turned at the sound of metal curtain rings clinking aside along the line. 

Astrid sat in her hospital gown on the edge of her bed gaping at two women in street clothes standing, the sick woman sitting propped up in the bed in rose coloured pajamas with her little girl by her side and the husband she’d seen earlier. She thought there was some other person sitting in a chair behind him, eclipsed by the man’s large body. 

“I’m sorry,” said the man moving towards Astrid with his hands outspread in a conciliatory gesture. “Are we being too loud? Um, do you need your chair back?” His eyes darted behind him to the chair he’d taken from her room. There was a little boy sitting on it now. He had large brown eyes, brown hair, a slightly pointy nose and a cast on his right leg. His cheeks had filled out and the proportions of his body had changed a little, grown longer and sturdier, but she knew she would recognize him anywhere, no matter how big he grew. 

“R-r-rumple?” whispered Astrid, her throat dry. 

The women’s expressions were full of concern for her. “What’s wrong?” asked Kate, taking in Astrid’s pinched pleading expression. “Do you need a nurse?” 

But Astrid barely heard their words. “Rumple, please! It’s me!” she rasped.  
Rumple’s eyes went wide and he looked frightened. He reached out to the woman closest to him. “M-mummy Chris why does that lady know my name? Who is she?”

Without really being aware of it Astrid was up and moving across the room, past the curtain barrier that had held her back for so long like it was nothing. 

“Rumple it’s me,” she said, her voice getting stronger. “It’s Astrid.”

Kate and Chris’s heads swiveled to the strange woman. They gaped at her in shock. “Astrid? Are you—are you sure?”

Kate and Chris’s eyes met, a look of shock and understanding passing between them. 

Chris had once said to Kate that if Astrid was indeed a real person, and not just a figment of Rumple’s imagination created to help him survive his lonely neglected state under his father’s care, then she was someone who wasn’t really like what Rumple said she was. 

He had probably made some anonymous junkie woman up in his mind into something she wasn’t. He had idolized her and turned her into some kind of hero, when really she was anything but. Whatever she had been it was obvious she was an irresponsible parental figure. The now dead Malcolm and this Astrid who was probably his girlfriend had never taken Rumple to the hospital early on when he was first injured, when he could’ve easily been help. They’d left him crippled, malnourished and unschooled and possibly physically abused. Under their “care” he’d developed pneumonia. Rumple’s supposed fairy friend had only taken him to the hospital when he was already quite ill. These were the actions of a criminally selfish individual who had no right to be looking after a child. They were not the actions of a responsible caring adult, even if for some reason Rumple, in his innocence could not see that.

Yet Chris suddenly understood now. Rumple was right for loving Astrid, she realized, and she herself was right for assuming Astrid had not been a responsible caring adult. 

How could she be? 

Astrid was a child. 

Well, teenager was a little more accurate. 

If Chris had to guess, she’d say this girl was what? About sixteen years old? Which meant she had gone to live with Malcolm and Rumple when she was thirteen? Fourteen? …Chris sickened at the thought. But now she understood how this girl could have let Rumple get in such a state and still have been his hero. She imagined a thirteen year old runaway, a girl who no one, not even her parents ever really wanted, desperate for love taken in by Malcolm Gold, a grown man in his late thirties who’d got her addicted to smack and then split and abandoned her with the child of his dead wife. A child that this poor girl had done her best to care for, with zero training and resources other than love for him and an advanced capacity for shoplifting. 

Astrid, who’d been tossed from relative to relative as a child who’d never met an adult who hadn’t let her down, or person in uniform who hadn’t tried to take advantage of her situation or lock her up against her will. 

Astrid, who thought it was her job to protect Rumple from people like the ones who’d been cruel to her when she was his age, police officers and well meaning but ineffectual adults who took her out of a bad situation only to stick her back into it later on and leave her there, with no one to turn to. 

Astrid, who just wanted to love someone and feel loved for once in her life, to have a friend she trusted, who wasn’t trying to trick her. Astrid, who felt like the desire to look after Rumple and be with him was the only thing that made her want to keep going, to grow up into a woman and stay alive. 

Astrid who’d finally admitted she couldn’t care for him any longer, who’d given him up so he could survive and get well and have a better life, even if it had literally come close to killing her.

Across the room Rumple looked terrified, unable to recognize her. He was beginning to whimper and inch back from the edge of the chair. 

Astrid noticed- how did she ever forget he used to do that?- he was trying to tuck up his bad leg underneath him, only now he had it in a cast for some reason and he couldn’t do it properly. Why a cast? Had he hurt it somehow? Had someone hurt him? Could she protect him now, sick as she is? “If I have to I will,” thought Astrid, resolutely. “I will use my last breath to protect him.”

“Please honey, don’t be frightened. I know I look a little different, but it’s really me, it’s Astrid,” she whispered, reaching out to him. But suddenly the man and the two healthy looking women were blocking her. 

“Please stop, you’re frightening him. Please, go back to your side of the room and we’ll talk about this.” 

Belle came to Rumple, who looked like he was ready to crawl up the wall to get away from the situation. She leaned against his chair on her tip-toes and tried to talk calmly to him. “Is it her Rum? Is it really Astrid?”

“N-n-no,” Rumple shook his head confused by everything. “That person—she’s not, she’s not. It can’t be her. Astrid has pink hair! This lady’s hair is brown! Why is she saying she’s Astrid?” Rumple began to cry. It was too cruel for this stranger to mock him like this, to try to trick him. 

Belle looked over at the skeletal woman with the stricken look on her face, now speaking with Kate and Chris in frightened tones. 

Then through the fog of confusion Rose spoke up. “Maybe it was hair dye,” she said.

“What?” asked Belle and Rumple in confusion. “What’s hair dye?”

Rose coughed. “It’s a special liquid that you can buy in the store to make your hair different colours. Lots of people use it. Your father for example,” she said to Belle, “his hair is actually mostly gray now. Too much worrying.” 

Belle’s eyes nearly goggled out of her head. “Really?”

“Yes,” nodded Rose sagely. “And pink is not a natural human hair colour. It would have to be hair dye for sure.”

Or magic, thought Rumple. Astrid had gone off alone, without him, he realized. Was it possible that being alone like that had made her lose all her fairy magic? Is that why she was here in the hospital, looking so sick, and worn, with dull short hair? He looked across the room, trying to study her face. 

It looked sort of like Astrid’s face, although thinner than he remembered it, with more protruding eyes and more prominent cheekbones. There was some weird scabby stuff near her ear and someone had shaved part of her hair and there were stitches there in her scalp, like the ones he’d got on his leg after some of the operations. 

But what Rumple really wanted to see were her eyes. 

Astrid had different coloured eyes, Rumple remembered, one green and one brown. It was part of the reason she liked David Bowie so much, she’d told him, because he had different coloured eyes too. 

Rumple wanted to see her eyes. No, needed to see her eyes. Just to be sure it wasn’t really her. He didn’t really believe this strange, brown-haired croaky sounding skinny woman could possibly be his Astrid, there must be some other explanation. But, if there wasn’t, a small voice said inside him, if it really was Astrid, his own beloved Astrid, and this had happened to her, then he knew he had to help her somehow. If this really was her, then she was all alone without anyone! There was no way Rumple would ever even take of chance of leaving her like that. 

Resolute in his intentions now, Rumple shimmied down off the chair and grabbed his crutches. With Belle following at his heels, he pushed himself in the gap between Chris and Kate who were helping the woman back onto the bed and trying to find the call button to contact the nurse. 

“Wait!” cried out Rumple who had suddenly popped up in their midst, much to his distracted mums’ surprise. “Please, please, I want to see her.”

“Rumple, are you sure you—“

But Rumple was already moving forward, much faster on his crutches now than he’d been in the hall.

The woman was sitting on the bed, her head bowed. 

He looked up at her and saw her eyes. One green, one brown. He felt a shiver go right through him like electricity. It was impossible and yet, and yet… it was HER!

“Astrid!” sobbed Rumple into her lap. He dropped his crutches and lifted his arms to hold her by the waist. “It’s really you! I missed you!”

Instinctively, Astrid had her arms around him, stabilizing him so he wouldn’t fall, holding him tight with her head bowed over him. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real. All this time. All this time away. She kissed his soft brown hair, taking in the smell of children’s apple scented shampoo, the scent of a healthy, growing little boy and knew he was no illusion. “Oh God, I’ve missed you too!” she sobbed. “I’ve missed you so much.”


	41. One Week Later

A Week Later

A week later and both Rose and Astrid were on the mend. 

Rose’s body had not rejected the transplant and her breathing was growing stronger every day. She was moving about more and had more energy. She often went with Belle and Maurice to the cafeteria and the gift shop of the hospital for magazines and sometimes just sat outside knitting with her IV beside her, watching the world go by on the busy city street, all the vibrant rush of busy humans thrumming around her that she’d so missed inside the hospital. She would have to be on immune-surpressing anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life and so her health would always be of concern if she got any sort of infection. 

She would need to come into the hospital frequently for check ups to make sure her new lungs were functioning in an optimal manner and there was no rejection or infection, but she didn’t care. Soon, very soon she knew she would be going home. At last. She was a little afraid, worried that Maurice and Belle would expect her to pick right up where she’d left off, taking care of Belle and the house and the meals, like she used to, before she got really sick. She knew she still wasn’t up to her full strength and such activities would be too demanding. She hated disappointing anyone.

It was hard, because in her heart she wanted to do everything NOW, go to Canada’s Wonderland with Belle and go to Niagara Falls and ride on the Maid of the Mist like she’d always wanted to, but had somehow never gotten around to doing and check out all the super tacky casinos and fly to Hawaii and see tropical fish in their natural habitats and take Belle and her little friend to Disneyworld. So much of living had been denied to her for so long, she just wanted to get out there and take it all, eat the whole world in one ginormous bite. But, as sensible Maurice often reminded her, she needed to pace herself. There would be time now. As long as she took care of herself as the doctors told her to, and Maurice and Belle helped until she was stronger, they would have that luxury for the first time in their married lives. 

Already Maurice seemed almost as reborn as Rose was. With Rose’s lung transplant, new life had been transplanted into him as well. He would always be a big, slightly lumbering man, but suddenly he seemed dozens of pounds lighter. He stood up straighter, no longer bowed over with all the worry that living under the shadow of his beloved’s coming demise had caused him for so many years. He imagined future scenarios he’d shut away in a box in his heart, because it was too painful for him to even think of them. Now his imagination took flight. In his mind’s eye he saw himself and his beautiful Rose celebrating their tenth anniversary in three months time. He imagined taking his wife back to that little cottage up north by the lake that belonged to his uncle, the place where he’d first proposed to her, when they were both so ridiculously young. What had ever possessed him to propose out in the middle of Lake Couchiching in a canoe of all things? 

“What if you’d dropped the ring?” Rose had asked at the time, smacking him playfully on the shoulder. And all he could think of to say was, “I wanted to surprise you.” 

He imagined lying with his wife, in that creaky old bed in the big bedroom in the cabin with that incongruous 1970s décor and making love to her, as they had that night, nine and half years ago, slowly and gently or quickly and hungrily, whatever way she wished was fine with him, as long as their bodies could join once more together. For nothing in the world could comfort his soul like making love to his darling Rose, and he knew, because she had often told him, that she felt the same. And they had both been without that powerful comfort through this whole soul crushing ordeal, just when they needed it more than they ever had before. The irony had been too cruel. 

Rose decided she didn’t need to go to Hawaii or even Niagara Falls, yet. She would be content for now, as long as she got to be with her family. It would be enough just to take Belle to school, like a regular mum, to meet her teacher and see her paintings on the classroom wall, to snuggle up with her little girl in bed and read her a bedtime story in person at last, to chill out on the couch on a Saturday night with a massive bowl of popcorn watching movies together as a family. Those were things she knew she could be doing within a week. The rest would come later. To be a real part of Belle and Maurice’s lives again, to be a family again, that was what she craved most. Rose couldn’t wait. 

 

*******

 

Astrid’s path would be quite different. She was recovering rapidly from the drug overdose and beating she had suffered, but her future was still uncertain. She was still only sixteen and would be considered a ward of the province for at least two more years. 

The story of how she’d ended up living in a crack house with Rumple and Malcolm and a slew of other assorted junkies came out gradually as Chris and Kate slowly gained her trust by visiting more with Rumple. It helped that she could see that Rumple was well taken care of. Upon seeing his cast and crutches the first thought that came into her mind was that the two women had somehow physically abused him. Rumple himself quickly disabused her of this notion, explaining, a little shyly, how they were taking him to the doctor to get his leg fixed so it wouldn’t hurt anymore and he could walk and run like other kids. She noticed how very gentle and careful they were with him when bringing him around and realized what he said was true.

This made quite an impression on Astrid. Not only was this something she’d never been able to give Rumple, it was something she’d never even imagined being able to give him. She cursed herself for being so stupid, especially when Rumple commented off-handedly that the doctors said he wouldn’t have needed so many operations or a cast for so long, if he’d gone to the hospital to get it fixed earlier. 

How could Astrid ever explain to him that she’d just thought he’d been born like that, how she’d just stupidly assumed there was nothing that could be done for it? She  
grieved to think that all she’d ever done for him was to get his father to stop picking on him so much for crawling; when if she’d just had the brains to figure out what was wrong and the guts to stand up to Malcolm and take Rumple to the hospital in the first place, he could’ve been walking around on his own right now. Instead he was still tottering about on crutches and watching kids on TV commercials blithely running about with Nerf footballs with that hungry, longing look in his eye that broke her heart.


	42. Chapter 42

One afternoon Chris came to visit Astrid alone at the hospital while Rumple was at school and Rose was down in the café having lunch with Maurice. She wanted to talk to the girl alone. There were things that still needed explaining and there was a lot she wasn’t in favour of exposing Rumple’s little ears to if it could be helped. 

Astrid was feeling pensive. Would it be okay for her to check out now, now that she knew Rumple was being properly cared for? 

She had seen that joy in his eyes when he’d seen her again, how much he’d said he’d missed her and how he’d held her and pleaded, “Promise me Astrid, promise you’ll never ever leave me again!”

Not “promise you’ll never do drugs again, Astrid,” she noticed. Not “promise we’ll get that condo you promised me, Astrid.” No Rumple’s request, like all his requests to her wasn’t too much more than he thought she could manage. He was very practical for a little boy. When he said it was with gritted teeth and nudge at her with the pointy end of his little nose and determined note in his voice that sang, “Promise?”

And she had promised. She’d do anything just to make him smile and be happy. She couldn’t betray him again, she felt, not like that, not ever again as long as she lived. But if she stayed alive and here for him, how would she actually live? —like from day to day and hour to hour, week to week? There were so many, so many unknowns. The world seemed full of things and all of them so overwhelming. 

“What’s your story?” asked Chris her as she offered her a cup of coffee. “I can tell from your accent that you’re not originally from here.”

“I’m from Manchester in England originally,” Astrid began and suddenly the whole story was tumbling right out of her. She had been holding onto it for so long, so long and why? Why not tell somebody? “Me mum had a relationship with this Canadian guy, a student on exchange. He graduated and went home to Canada and she stayed in the UK and had me. My Mum, she’s kind of a difficult character. She likes to drink and uh, do other stuff. She didn’t really want to have a kid, y’know? So she farmed me out to my Nana—my grandma. And then Nana got cancer and Mum had to take me back, so I lived with her and her boyfriend who was a fucking prick and then my grandma got better and I moved back with her—then she met this guy and we all moved to Liverpool except he was a fucking pervert and my grandma wouldn’t believe me when I told her—so I ran back to Mum and then one day, me Mum and Bruce, that was the guy she was going out with at the time, went on vacation without me and somebody found out that they left me all alone in the flat for four days so child services came and got me and put me in foster care. It was alright in care for me, but then my Aunt Alice and her husband said they’d take me in, because Mum and Nana didn’t want me to be in care, so Is tayed with them a bit, but I was badly behaved, so they kicked me out and I went back to Nana who’d finally split with that jerk from Liverpool, so I was with her another year and then she fucking died on me! Then I was back again with Mum, but I was older already and getting in trouble, going off for a few days every so often to party and truant from school and all that. They got me on a few ASBOS charges.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, they don’t have that here? It’s like anti-social behavior and that, basically just being a punk and messing about and bothering people. But by then Mum’d had enough and we were fighting all the time anyway, so she somehow manages to get my Dad in Canada to take me, who I’ve only seen like once before in me life. But Dad agreed as long as I didn’t bring no drugs or boys or alcohol to the house. So I get to this place, outside Toronto called Mimico and it’s this timepostcardy cutesy little town and so perfect and Dad’s married now and has two other biological daughters and a wife, sour old slag that she was. 

She hated me from the start, thought I was a bad influence on her precious perfect daughters. They were so rich it made me sick. But I tried my best to get on with them and go to school and shit but I just couldn’t stick it. And there was nowhere to go except inside the houses because I couldn’t drive and there were no subways out there or shops or decent bus service or anything. Then my Dad got this brain aneuryism and died unexpectedly. I didn’t have a place in my stepmum’s home and my real mum back in England said there weren’t enough room for me in her new place with her new fellow, so that was it really. You know the rest.” She shrugged trying to brush it off. 

“What do you plan to do when you’re out of here?” asked Chris seriously.

Astrid shrugged. “I dunno, go back to where I was I guess.”

Chris leaned toward her and there was a strange sparkle in her eye. “How would you like to try something different?”

Astrid raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “Different how?”

“Like I dunno, a place to stay maybe?” 

“Like a flat or a group home or…?”

“Someplace where they could help you get clean.”

“Oh. You mean some drug treatment centre or something.” Astrid tried to hide her disappointment.

“You know you are still underage to be on your own. The Children’s Aid Society is recommending a foster home for you after you’ve completed the mandated drug treatment program.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But it just so happens that I’ve worked for the CAS for a number of years as a social worker and I know your case worker personally. So we had a little chat about what would be feasible in your case and I was wondering, before I do it, if you were open to a certain idea I’d had.”

“What idea?”

“Namely, that once you’ve completed treatment and are clean again, you might consider coming home with us.”

“Us?” 

“Me, my wife Kate and Rumple. We could foster you.”

“You?” Astrid couldn’t believe her ears. “But why?”

Chris looked down at her hands. “Rumple…doesn’t trust easily. If there’s something even just a little bit off about a person, anything even the tiniest bit aggressive or threatening or frightening to him, he just clams right up and hides.” 

Astrid grimaced. She wished she could’ve taken better care of him, made sure he learned to be comfortable around other people instead of afraid all the time. Of course, most other people hadn’t treated him terribly well, his own father among them, so you couldn’t blame him for his instincts. She certainly knew how hard to break some habits could be. 

“But Rumple trusts you. He loves you. And I’ve been around him long enough to know that when he feels that way about a person, when he likes them and cares about them and trusts them and is willing to let them in, then that must person must be a very gentle, kindhearted and special person indeed. You mean a great deal to him. There are not many people he lets in, but of those he does I’ve always found them to be people who I’ve come to love as well and he loves you beyond any other friend he has even after all this time. You are part of his family and he is part of ours which makes you part of our family by default. We don’t turn our backs on family, especially when they’re going through a hard time.”

“But you don’t even know me?” protested Astrid. “How come—what makes you think you can trust me? I don’t know what Rumple’s told you, but--” 

Chris shrugged. “Everybody deserves a second chance don’t you think? I mean when me and Kate got Rumple’s file you wouldn’t believe how many other families had already rejected him, seeing all the crap he’d been through and the health problems without really seeing Rumple at all, not the real wonderful sweet little boy behind all the words and reports.”

“He is wonderful, isn’t he?” said Astrid wistfully.

“We tend to think so,” Chris smiled back at her. 

Astrid was glad then that he was with these people. Even if none of those other families saw past his background and shyness and all the surgery he would need, Chris and Kate could see the way Astrid could that no one else in the world was so funny and sweet, so cute and so kind and so loving. Astrid realized that he was the first person she’d ever known in her life to forgive her for something, the first person she’d ever felt really cared for her. If it was up to her Rumple would be the first picked for every family, every team. Astrid thought about that and it made her heart hurt, that anyone would reject her little boy, her brother and her friend. She thought about Rumple the way he was now, who looked so much bigger and healthier, in his clean new outfits and haircut, who talked more and seemed so much more confident. There’d been a lot of physical changes, but Astrid could see he was still tiny for his age and couldn’t walk like other kids. Astrid knew he wasn’t so keen on school and the reasons why. She remembered Malcolm making fun of Rumple for crawling on the ground and riding in a stroller. She knew why it hurt so much when other kids called him a baby and why he wanted to hide from the bigger kids. 

She’d been to a lot of schools in her time, ping ponging from one adult to another. She remembered other children going after her like heat seeking missiles to bully and torment, on the look out for anyone just a little bit shy or different, someone who stuck out, who didn’t have a lot of friends around to protect them. You get plenty of experience with that, when you’re constantly the new kid with the weird accent and crappy clothing. Chris and Kate seemed nice, but they were the types to go talk to a teacher, or a child’s parents when bullying was suspected. After all her years on the street Astrid knew the only thing a big bully was really afraid of was an even bigger bully. 

Astrid had fought with Malcolm, a grown man almost a foot taller than her. She’d told o knife wielding drug dealers where to stick it and cops with guns and truncheons to piss off. She was pretty sure she could handle of few kindergarten bullies and she knew plenty of ways even a small person could make others afraid of them, not that she’d ever encourage Rumple to use them, but they were good things to know. 

Chris smiled slyly at her, seemingly aware of her unspoken plans to teach unaware of her Rumple how to knee bigger kids in the balls. Oh yes, she could see what Rumple saw in this woman. “I’m glad he went to you,” said Astrid. “I can tell you love him.”

“And so,” said Chris softly, “do you. Come on, now that you’ve finally found each other, I wouldn’t think of separating you.”

“I don’t know if I’m good for him. People say I’m a bad influence.” 

“Hardly. I’ve never seen Rum this happy since he came to live with us. And to think, Dr. Blau told him you weren’t real! I ought to introduce you to her, just to see the expression on her face.”   
Yes, thought Astrid, she did quite like this woman. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad living with her, not bad at all.


	43. Exciting times

“You can close your eyes,” said Kate, clasping his sweaty little hand in hers. “It’s all right.”  
No matter how many times he’d gone to have casts removed and heard the buzzy little cast removing saw, Rumple always broke out in a sweat at the sound and his whole body grew rigid with fear. It didn’t help that the nurse controlling the machine was the one he’d “accidentally” hit in the face the last time he was there.   
“Just hold still dearie,” said the woman, “and it will all be over in a second.” Her words were meant to be comforting, but her tone was bored and apathetic. It took every ounce of courage Rumple had in his little frame not to bolt and Kate knew it.   
“Who’s my brave little guy?” she said softly to him and gave his hand another squeeze.  
He shut his eyes tight and heard the buzzing get loader as the saw came down and then the cast was vibrating on his leg as the saw went along its length, first one side and then the other.  
“All done,” said the nurse at one point and Rumple opened his eyes. The woman put her strong hands on it and prized it open like cracking open two halves of a walnut, and inside was Rumple’s little leg, all covered in plaster dust and smelling rather odd from not being washed for a month and a half.  
“Look Mummy Kate! I’m free! I’m free!” he grinned and shook his skinny little leg at her.   
She smiled and felt her eyes get a little moist. She put her arm around his shoulders and said, “Yes you are honey, my brave little boy.”   
Rumple bounced up and down on his bottom on top of the examining table as the nurse came to wash all the dust and plaster bits off, raring to get out of there so he could go home. “Wait ‘till Mummy Chris sees!” he enthused. “And Astrid and Belle and Maurice and Rose and Victor and Ruby and…”  
Kate was happy for him, as he prattled on, but her heart hurt a little too because, while Rumple was just happy to be out of the cast, she could clearly see how stick-like his healed leg looked, even more shrunken than it had look the last time it came out of the cast, just a bone with skin on top really. It didn’t look like it could shift a feather, let alone support the weight of an active, growing boy. She couldn’t stop from noticing how feebly it moved when he waved it about. She could clearly see the long road stretching ahead of them all, even if Rumple, still being small, and focused on the here and now could not. However she kept her thoughts to herself. He was happy now, and that was what mattered. He lived in the moment, not worried about the future and Kate tried to do the same. After all, the future would come whether they worried or not.   
They had his boot and air cast at home, because for now it was best that his skin have a chance to breathe, so Kate picked Rumple up off the table and holding him by his armpits helped him take a few stiff steps to his stroller to get in. She had a regular matching sock and shoe for him to put on, which he was quite proud to do on his own. He went home with Kate on the bus chattering away about this and that, staring at his matching shoes the whole way home.   
As soon as they were home, he was out of the stroller and yelling for Chris to come see, (despite the fact that she wasn’t due home for another hour) then crawling around like usual, only ten times faster, ping-ponging from kitchen to living room and back again, bouncing himself on the sofa and the ottoman, picking up toys and books and putting them down again, moving about like a mini-whirlwind across the floor.   
“Rumple, calm down!” said Kate as he pulled himself up on the counter and started to go through the mail, seeing what words he could read on the envelopes before dropping down again to scoot around.   
“But we have to eat soon!”  
“What’s the rush?”  
“I have so much stuff to do.”  
“Uh-huh. Just who do you have meetings with, the president of Microsoft?”  
“No,” he rolled his eyes. “Don’t be silly.”  
“Then what?”  
“Now that I can get properly wet all over, we havta go swimming and go on water slides and jump in the pool and in the lake and go on trampolines and then go on all the rollercoasters at the Ex and Wonderland and I’m going to learn to bike and skateboard not on my tummy and scooter and rollerblade and jump on the bed and wear more stretchy pants and jump out of parachutes and…”  
By dinnertime Rumple had calmed down somewhat with the careful application of Nintendo 3DS, only to launch back into hyperactivity again as soon as Chris showed up with the news they’d be allowed to visit Astrid at the rehab centre the next day.   
Rumple could barely contain himself. “She never saw me walk, not really,” he confided to his mums. “She’s going to totally freak out!” he grinned. “Wait ‘till you see, she’s going to faint or something!” he exclaimed as he gleefully twirled a piece of spaghetti around his fork just picturing Astrid’s face. “She’s not going to believe it!”  
Above Rumple’s head where he couldn’t see, Kate’s gaze slid sideways towards Chris and they shared a concerned look.  
“You uh, you might want to take it a little slowly at first,” cautioned Chris.   
“Why?”  
“Remember how your leg was the last time you came out of the cast? It was a little weak at first, remember?” Kate prodded him gently.   
“So?”  
“So, don’t feel bad if you can’t walk so well right away. In a couple of days you’ll start physio again and then you’re going to do exercises and get really strong, okay? It’s just—it might take a little time. You gotta be patient. Don’t expect too much.”  
Rumple opened his mouth to protest, but then he saw the looks on his mums’ faces, and decided the smart thing to do would be to play along. “Oh yeah, alright,” he nodded. “I’ll be patient.”  
And they smiled a little, looking relieved.   
He giggled into his napkin when the adults got up to clear off the dishes, because what he was really thinking was, They’re gonna be surprised, because I’m going to do it. I don’t care what they say! I’ll walk right in through the door by myself and give Astrid the shock of her life!


	44. Astrid at the Centre

They were late. More like not coming at all, thought Astrid. 

In a way she felt disappointed, but in another way she felt relieved. She wanted so very much to be good for Rum, to be what he thought of her in his mind; brave and smart, heroic and resourceful, be tough and strong, but she knew deep inside that she wasn’t. She was weak and afraid. She watched her fingers shaking the teacup in her hand against her will, making the saucer rattle lightly beneath them. She lowered it slowly to the table and raked a hand through her short dull hair.

She was a wreck and she knew it. She couldn’t sleep at night. She shivered and shook and sweated through her pajamas, the ones Kate and Chris had been kind enough to give her along with some of their old clothes. She’d lost so much weight it looked like she was wearing bags. It was ironic she couldn’t sleep, seeing as how this was the first time she’d slept in a decent bed with clean sheets and mattress off the floor in ages. She even had regular access to a shower with soap and shampoo. 

She loved the cleanliness and the three square meals a day. She didn’t have to beg or steal or forage from garbage bins. The days were scheduled and orderly here. You always knew what expect. It was comforting in a way at first, but now she longed to do her own thing at her own pace. When she wanted, where she wanted. She wasn’t used to following someone else’s rules or being checked up on or looked after. Sometimes the oddness of it all made her feel uncomfortable like she was a character in some strange movie, an actress performing some strange version of herself. She wished for the comfort of the drugs and everything else she felt familiar with even if some of it was horrid. 

It was odd seeing the counselors as well, who were always asking her about how she felt about this or thought about that. It was peculiar because no one had ever seemed much interested in what she thought or felt before other than Rumple, and he’d really had no one else to talk to. She’d been his only window and link to the world outside, other than the TV. 

She knew the counselors at the centre didn’t really care about her. How could they? They were paid to act caring and councillatory. She wondered if secretly they thought she was scum and looked down on her like all the other law abiding straight people who walked by her on the street when she used to panhandle or kicked her for fun when she’d been reduced to sleeping in supermarket doorways.

But she thought the two women looking after Rumple were different. Kate and Chris didn’t seem to be like that. For one thing they’d taken Rum on as their own kid and they genuinely seemed to love and care for him and he them. And they had given her the clothes she was now wearing and Chris had used her influence in the CAS to finagle her into this swanky drug treatment facility. So what if they were really just helping her because of Rumple? Help and kindness were help and kindness and not to be sneezed at. But she knew such things could only go so far. Why would they waste their weekend hanging out in a shitty rehab common room with a teenage junkie in withdrawl that they weren’t even related to? Perhaps she’d expected too much. No, scratch that, of course she’d expected too much.

They probably forgot or just said it because it was the right thing to say at the time. They’d done more than they had to do already, she told herself firmly, angrily. They have no obligation to you, no responsibility for you. What did you expect you stupid girl? her mind spat back at her in the voice of her mother. And much to her shame, her eyes began to water. 

She looked off out the window so none of the other people in the common room would see her silently crying. She blinked as the tears fell down her cheeks. It was the withdrawl, she told herself, ordinarily such things wouldn’t bother her. She was tougher than that, used to rejection. But when her vision cleared from the tears and she could see clearly out the window again, she noticed two figures moving down the street. 

There was an adult figure pushing an empty stroller and walking beside her, holding tightly to the one of the stroller handles was a small child, probably just learning to walk, Astrid thought, toddling along. They were moving very, very slowly as the Mum tried to keep pace with the little figure, who now that she thought about it, did seem rather big for a toddler. As they grew closer she saw the little figure was walking so slowly because he had some sort of gray thing on his leg and the mother kept on turning to him to talk or argue with him and he was shaking his little head. She clearly wanted him to get in the stroller, but he was refusing. 

Suddenly, a jolt ran right through her. It couldn’t be-- Rumple didn’t—but who else would—the woman— Astrid’s thoughts were racing.

And then she saw a slimmer woman with shorter hair jog up behind the two figures and take the little boy’s other hand so he could walk more easily between the two of them. 

Astrid was up from her chair like a shot. She rushed to the thick wood panel double doors that kept people in and out of the centre. There was a small window in each door and a large female security guard in a uniform with a walk-talky on her hip in front of them. 

Astrid saw the thickset female guard, her arms crossed impassively over her chest and remembered, with a sinking heart that she wasn’t allowed out. 

“Please, Mary,” she pleaded with the female guard, whose name she just happened to read off her tag, “Please let me go to them, they’re my family, my little boy, look he’s walking to me.” Tears sprang up in her eyes as she realized it was true. The guard glanced down the street at the three slow moving forms, inching their way up the sidewalk. 

“I can’t let you out,” said the guard. “I’m under orders.”

“Please,” cried Astrid, “I’ve never seen him walk before. Look, he’s trying so hard. He’ll tire out soon and he so badly wants me to see!” 

The guard looked through the small window in the door, down the street and spied the two women and the little boy. She never told the patients at the centre, but she had a little boy and girl of her own back at home. Her impassive façade cracked just a little. 

“Alright,” she said to Astrid. “Go out and see your boy do his thing, but then you come right back here and wait for them to come the rest of the way, alright? And for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone! I could lose my job.” 

“Yes! Yes! Thank you! Thank you!” grinned Astrid and gave the increasingly uncomfortable guard a swift hug. 

Astrid flung open the large double doors and skipped down the steps to the sidewalk. 

Rumple, who was looking down, concentrating very hard on moving his feet in synch, including the one in the clunky gray boot looked up at the sound of the doors flying open. Then he saw Astrid coming at him down the street and instantly broke out into a huge smile. 

He looked up at his Mums. “Please, I wanna go on my own a bit,” he said. “Let me show Astrid. She’s never seen me do it myself.” 

“But Rum—“ muttered Chris.

Kate put her hand on her wife’s arm. “C’mon Chris, let him try.” 

And Chris let go of Rumple’s hand on one side, biting her lip with worry. Rumple let go of the stroller handle with the other, and walked down the sidewalk all by himself without a stick or crutches or anything. 

With two squares of sidewalk between them Astrid stopped. She crouched down and waited, arms outstretched as Rumple walked slowly and stiffly towards her, arms outstretched, all on his own. 

And when he reached her at last, and fell exhausted into her arms, she held on tight, as if she’d never ever let him go.


	45. Rumple, age 8

Rumple’s 8th Birthday

“Wake up! Wake up! It’s my birthday!” cheered a high pitched little voice as Chris felt the bed bounce around her. 

“Gah!” Kate awoke with a start as a little body hurled itself on top of her and then began jumping on the bed.

“Wake up! Wake up!” 

“Cut it out Rum, we’re awake!” grumbled Chris. 

“Didn’t we tell you to wait until 8 o’clock?” asked Kate.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Eight o’clock because I’m turning eight years old! I know, I know!” Rumple cheered excitedly. 

Actually, he’d woken up at seven and had been parked in the hall by his mums’ room reading a book with his flashlight, his eyes darting over to the numbers on his Spider-man digital watch every few seconds until the numbers flashed 8:00 precisely, which is when he darted into the room to wake them up. He had his book in his hand still, it was “Ramona Quimby, age 8” naturally, on loan from Belle who had all the Beverly Cleary books. 

“C’mere you grown up boy!” said Kate and began to tickle him and he squirmed and kicked all over the bed, giggling and giggling. 

Chris kissed him on the head and gave him a big squeeze. He nuzzled up to her shoulder and pretended to be a cat, meowing and butting his head up against her. 

“Happy birthday sweetie!”

Chris and Kate made Rumple his favourite waffle breakfast with Astrid’s help. 

Kate was just getting ready to make the coffee when the doorbell rang. 

Rumple jumped off his chair and ran to get it. 

Chris didn’t think she’d ever get tired of the sight, her little boy running.

His legs still weren’t exactly the same length, but it was impossible to tell with shoes on. He walked fine and straight with a small lift in his right sneaker to make up for the slight discrepancy. He still had a slight limp when barefoot, and his formerly injured leg still hurt a bit when it rained, but otherwise he was perfectly healthy and free from pain.

As soon as he’d gotten his last cast off and had been allowed to go in the water, he’d taken to swimming with a vengeance. Though still smaller than other kids his age, he’d grown considerably. He’d gotten tanned and brown swimming in the outdoor pool at summer camp twice a day and his formerly puny arms had acquired some sinewy new muscles he never grew tired of showing off.. 

Rumple’s love of any kinds of pants that were not sweatpants continued unabated. He had regular jeans in several colours, skinny jeans, Bermuda shorts, overalls, snap up track bottoms. He even had a tiny kilt and sporrin which he had worn to Chris’s brother’s Scottish wedding in his position as ring-bearer. (And he’d done a great job too, everyone said so!) In truth, Chris had to admit his clothing choices did tend towards the flamboyant, but she supposed he got it from Astrid.

It had been strange at first incorporating Astrid into their lives. They’d only started letting her take Rumple for short periods of time by herself outside the house. The first time, they’d been on tenderhooks the entire three hours, terrified they’d be scraping poor Rumple off the floor of a drug den and hearing the police on the blower any minute. 

But Astrid returned right on time. Rumple’s mouth was smeared with chocolate from the ice cream treat she’d bought him and he’d got some down his shirt as well, but that was all. 

They made a deal with her that if she managed to stay clean, she could stay with them and Rumple. She had tried before to wean herself off drugs, but this was the first time she ever really had a reason to make sure she stayed clean and people around her who actually cared about her staying healthy and sticking to the treatment plan. No one had ever really believed in her before. 

The detox process at the treatment centre had been awful, but visits from Rumple, Chris and Kate and even Rose once she got better, had sustained her and kept her hope alive. She hadn’t backed out or relapsed since then. Staying off drugs meant that she got to keep Rumple in her life and live in a clean place with people who showed her respect and were helping her finish her high school courses and get a job. After running and hustling and scrounging through life for so long, she was relieved to rest at last, to let someone take care of her a bit for a change.

Chris and Kate detected a new confidence in Rumple, too.

It was subtle at first, but they came to see it more and more as time went on, he was less afraid of everything, and was beginning to think he was more worthwhile. 

After all, Astrid had come back, given up the bad medicine for him, only for him. He knew he had saved her life, just as she had once saved his. An unimportant, useless, person wouldn’t have been able to do this. He, Rumple, was useful, he was important and he was brave. It didn’t matter if he was in a cast and on crutches, as he was when he saw Astrid at the hospital, he’d been able to bring her back to life. He knew because she told him so every time she saw him. He wasn’t useless like Malcolm said, even before he could walk properly again. It didn’t matter. He had always very very very useful. He’d just never realized it before Astrid came back.

After that, when he’d looked around at the kids on the playground, he didn’t feel like hiding anymore or that he was less than anyone else because he had to play in a different way. How many of the rest of them could say they’d saved someone’s life? That someone else was alive because of them? Really, there was only one other person on that playground he knew who could, and that was Belle. 

He answered the door and she was there, bouncing on her heels on the welcome mat, carrying a brightly wrapped package. He was pretty sure from the shape and that it was Belle bringing it, that the present was a bunch of new books. “Hey Rum! Look what we got you!” 

Unlike last year where Belle had had to improvise a birthday present on her own, this year, Belle’s mum had taken her a week before to the bookshop to pick out the perfect book for her best friend’s birthday. Belle’s mum was healthy now, taking immunosuppressant drugs and working part time at the bookstore near the school so they got an excellent discount. She always came to pick her daughter up after school, usually with a treat for her in her pocket and of course, one for Rum as well. 

Belle’s mother and father had remained with Belle in the city after her mother got out of the hospital. Maurice had originally moved them to the city to be near Belle’s mother Rose, under the advice of the doctors, who said she probably wouldn’t have much longer to live as lungs that matched her rare blood type were scarcer even than regular lungs were to obtain. Maurice had wanted to be with Rose as much as he could for as long as possible before the inevitable occurred. He had moved Belle to the small city apartment thinking it would be temporary, leaving most of their things behind in their house in the suburbs. 

Now that Rose had her organ transplant and was looking forward to many more years watching Belle grow up, they had other considerations. They still had to make sure she took care of her new lungs. Although she could work and do most things she did before, she still needed frequent check ups at the hospital to monitor things to make sure there was no rejection and keep infections in check when they occurred. It just made more sense to live within easy distance to the specialists in the city who knew her and could give her the best care, instead of her having to drive several hours into town every time she needed a check-up. So the summer after Rose got her transplant, Maurice sold their big house in the suburbs and bought a smaller house in the city. It was still bigger than the tiny apartment they had lived in. Now Belle had all her old toys, desk and bed back with her, everything she needed to feel at home in the new place, but most importantly of all, she had her Mama. 

Astrid came by to see Belle and Rose at the door and Rose admired her friend’s new hair colour. It wasn’t thin or mousy brown anymore, but thick and curly and she’d dyed it back to pink again, a bright fuscha colour that could be seen from miles away. “So you can always find me in a crowd,” she’d told Rumple the week before, “and I’ll never be lost from you again.” 

Chris pulled out the other leaf to the table and Kate and Astrid set three more places. Maurice had brought a big jar of freshly squeezed orange juice and Rose had a tray full of home cooked brownies that Belle insisted she had mostly made herself. 

Together, Kate, Chris, Astrid, Maurice, Rose and Belle sat around the table with Rumple at the head. 

Later on Belle and Rumple would put on their swimsuits and jump through the sprinkler in the backyard with Ruby and Victor. They’d play tag and soccer and there would be a barbeque for all of them and Emma and Neal and baby Henry would come over. Baby Henry was bigger now, just learning to walk and Rumple was helping teach him. Then there’d be presents and cake and pin the tail on the donkey and other games and when it got dark they’d go back inside and watch Rumple’s favourite movie, “Beauty and the Beast.”

But for now, they were having a delicious birthday breakfast. Wearing the silly paper birthday crown that Kate had made him, Rumple dug into his fresh waffles with maple syrup and paused with the piece of waffle halfway to his mouth. Everyone else was digging into their food or chatting or pouring orange juice. 

For a moment no one was looking at him and he could just observe them like this, his friends, his family. Two years ago he’d been all alone in the world and now the little kitchen in Kate and Chris’s house was filled to the brim with people who loved him. Sometimes he could barely believe this was his life now. Other times his old life felt like some sort of bad dream that had happened to a different little boy, long ago and half forgotten. He swung his strong little legs under the table and shared a look with Belle who seemed to know what he was thinking. 

“Want my present after breakfast?”

“Absolutely,” he grinned and took a big bit of his waffle as Chris ruffled his hair and Kate squeezed him around the shoulders. Across the table Astrid smiled at him as she decorated his nose with a dab of whipped cream. 

He couldn't remember a better day.


End file.
